Got my first cheque from Southern Electric following installation of solar panels on the roof earlier this year. The £139 total (I’m ignoring an extra 4 p) covers 310 kilowatt hours fed back into the National Grid between July 12 and September 30.The amount of juice I generate varies with the light (not heat) put out by the sun but, just for fun, here’s some back-of-envelope calculations. On the basis of this payment my average expectation is £1.74 per day. Thus in a year I can expect £635.
All in, the system cost £8000. Amortising this figure at this rate would take 12.6 years and I would be nearly 89. None of you, but none of you, will be reading Works Well in 2023 although we’ll draw a discreet veil over the most likely reason.
However… fuel prices are going up. The wretched Huw Edwards (qv) says so, so it must be true. Stick with me until my early eighties and I’ll let you know.
The lower photograph shows the inverter, installed in the loft.
A MAN OF METHOD Faced with a meat-and-two-veg dinner I eat the greens first (spinach before green beans), then the potatoes, then the meat. The meat is a final treat, like reaching the top of Kanchenjunga. I am not interested in rickety forkfuls containing all four constituents.
I check incoming comments to Works Well via LiveMail but never read them there. Immediately I whiz over to Blogger and read them in sequence with the relevant post. Doing it this way makes me feel I’m doing the right thing by my correspondents.
When I go to the toilet… But perhaps that’s enough in the way of nervous tics.
5 comments:
I feel a certain empathy with you about the way solid feedstock is transported to the inner processing plant. I also load up with a single input, but do the rounds so to speak so that when approaching the end of the course I am left with samples of the various ingredients. Out of those I save what is deemed to be the best until the end.
Without wishing to appear sexist - heaven forfend - I do wonder whether the desire and practice of loading the conveyor belt with an unstable mix of various ingredients, presumably to indulge in an holistic tasting experience, is not a girlie thing. Of course my experience is limited, and I do try to avoid watching the way others put nutrients into their loading bays.
How does the £139 stack up against your electric bill for the same period?
Are all the panels visible in the pic or are there more on the hidden part of the roof?
Tom: My immediate reaction is a quick vain trawl down Memory Lane to see whether I can recall evidence that supports your interesting confession. But you're right; watching others eat is an acquired experience and the only thing I'm (fairly) sure of is that at Erquy you used cutlery and not your hands. Having said that I now realise that if we ever share a table again some sort of shriving act will be necessary to avoid an attack of mutual self-consciousness.
What is much stranger is the vocabulary you have drawn on for this comment. It's as if you are referring to my last job before I retired, editorship of a logistics magazine. Words and phrases like "feedstock", "processing plant". "input", "loading the conveyor belt" and "loading bays" were all grist to my mill (whatever that means) and I'm carried back to my comparative youth. I'd be inclined to blame Mol's mistress for this since she's particularly good on my worm-eating tendencies but the links here are tenuous.
Sir Hugh: I can't easily match up the period covered in my payback statement with my normal electricity bill. However, I can say say that my budget payments are £54 a month, equivalent to £648 a year and that I overpaid during the last six-month period by about £50.
There are eight panels.
Uff. That's almost 230 Dollars! I could buy the longed-for couch in two months! How is this not a good deal? Oh, right ... the debt would need to be paid off first. Moonlighting? But then debt isn't always a bad thing. What would happen to the US economy without treasury bonds?
Tom has reminded me of why I dumped my last guy. He was too girlie. I should not have watched him eat.
Thank goodness you stopped where you did. That was very nearly WAY too much information.
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