How I became a convert to solar panels – and made a profit on my electricity bill last

My spirits always lift at this time of year when the sun comes out – but this spring I have an extra reason to enjoy the warmer weather.

Last year, my wife Helen and I finally installed solar panels on our home, which means that sunny days boost our bank balance as well as my mood.

But the bright spell comes after some pretty grey weather earlier in the year.

So, do the numbers for solar panel installation really add up in cloudy, rainy Britain?

We didn’t get solar panels sooner because, I must admit, I had simply assumed they would not be viable for our roof because of the direction it faces.

However, our energy company offered to do a free survey, and on a whim I accepted.

Bright future: Sir Steve Webb and wife Helen spent around £8,000 installing solar panels on the roof of their home – but the investment is already paying off

It turns out our roof is perfectly usable. Although a south-facing roof is the ideal, solar power can still be perfectly viable even if – like ours, which faces east – yours is not.

The surveyor sent us a proposed design layout (though initially for our neighbour’s roof by mistake), which involved six panels at the front and six at the back, and that looked fine to us.

In rare cases planning permission is needed for solar panels – if say, you live in a listed building or conservation area, but this did not apply to our house.

Next, we had to decide whether to install a battery.

These allow you to store surplus power from the solar panels for use at times of day when you are not generating much or any. It saves you having to draw power from the National Grid.

There’s clearly a good case for a battery but we decided to do without. This was partly because of the additional upfront outlay of around £6,000, partly because it would occupy further space in our house, and partly because I’m not a fan of the company that manufactures them: Tesla.

We could have shopped around for solar installers, but instead simply chose our own energy company – Good Energy – which we have been with for more than a decade. It managed the whole thing from start to finish, which reduced the hassle factor.

The installation itself was relatively smooth. Scaffolding went up about a week beforehand and another team fitted the panels and associated cabling. 

This included a box on the outside wall which provides a ‘cut-off’ in the event of an emergency, as well as an additional fuse box inside our house.

The installation took a couple of days, and then about a week later the scaffolding came down.

There was a mixture of instant satisfaction and delayed gratification once the panels were installed.

The good news is that our solar panels come with an app, which shows you every 15 minutes exactly how much power you are generating as well as keeping long-term data.

Unfortunately, I do have a tendency to check the app even when I’m working away, and my wife starts to feel slightly spied upon when I comment later about how the sun must have dipped between 2pm and 3pm that afternoon.

In terms of how the panels look, they’re almost flush to the roof, so are about as unobtrusive as they could be.

As with all these things, you very quickly get used to them and stop noticing them after the novelty has worn off.

Since the panels went up last July, the app tells me that we’ve saved half a tonne of carbon dioxide, which is the equivalent of planting 31 trees, so you feel you are doing your bit for the planet as well as saving money.

A minor frustration was that it took many weeks before the panels were formally registered on the network and payments could be made for the power we export.

Savings: Sir Steve’s supplier charges around 26p per unit of electricity but pays only 15p per unit for power generated – so it pays to use as much of the energy you generate as you can

But the delay meant that when we eventually got our first payment it was more than £100, which was a nice bonus.

There are two ways in which the panels work financially, and one is much more obvious than the other.

First, we get paid for each kilowatt-hour of spare electricity that we export to the grid.

We currently receive around 15p for each unit, and we’ve received around £300 in total since last July. 

I was interested to learn that the exported electricity doesn’t get transported long distances to be used elsewhere, but apparently helps to provide power for our neighbours’ homes in the first instance.

But the second, more lucrative form of saving comes when we directly consume energy we have generated rather than drawing it from the grid.

Our energy supplier currently charges us around 26p per unit, which is higher than the 15p it pays us per unit we export. 

So we save more money consuming our own units of energy than we profit from selling them to the grid. And this saving grows every time electricity prices are hiked, which is another bonus.

We haven’t radically changed the timing of our energy usage since the panels went up, though we now tend to opt for sunny days to use the washing machine.

The numbers look great in sunny periods. In the first 20 days of April, my app shows that we spent £20.05 (ignoring VAT and standing charges) on the electricity which we drew from the grid, but were paid £48.52 for the power that we exported, leaving us nearly £30 up on electricity.

We actually have a ‘negative’ combined gas and electricity bill so far this month.

But, on the other hand, because December was so grey, we received just £3.27 in export payments for the whole month.

In all, we paid just over £8,000 to have the panels installed, and my best guess is that we will get that back over eight to ten years.

It’s hard for anyone to know if they will still be living in the same property in a decade’s time, and it’s possible we won’t recover all our initial outlay if we were to move. 

But it may be that having solar panels, offering a steady stream of income and reduced bills, might add something to the sale value of our property.

I recognise that we were in the privileged position of being able to meet the upfront costs of panels and not everyone can do so. But there are various grants and loans available from the Government. Go to gov.uk/green-deal-energy-saving-measures to find out what is on offer.

I was late to this particular party, but I have to say I’m a convert.

The only downside is that, for some reason, other people don’t appear quite as interested as me when I insist on telling them the latest readings from my solar panel app.

• Steve Webb was UK Pensions Minister 2010-15 and is now a partner with pension consultants LCP.