People sometimes ask me when the best time is to put solar panels on the roof. The honest answer is twenty years ago. We do not have time travel, so the next best time is now. The moment the panels go up they start producing electricity, cutting or removing your bill and giving you real energy security for the years ahead. In this post I will explain what energy security actually means for your home, how solar shields you from rising prices, and why the long horizon of a solar system makes the upfront cost worth it.
The best time is now
There is no clever timing trick with solar. Every day the panels are not on the roof is a day they are not making you electricity.
As soon as they go up, they get to work. They start cutting your bill from day one and they keep going for decades. So rather than waiting for some perfect moment, the sensible move is to get them producing as early as you can. The clock on your payback only starts once the panels are generating.
What energy security really means
Energy security is simpler than it sounds. It means you make your own electricity, so you depend far less on what you buy from the grid.
Without solar, you are fully exposed to the price of electricity. Whatever the market does, you pay it, on every single unit your home uses.
With a decent solar system, that changes. You are only exposed on the shortfall, the extra electricity you need that your panels and battery cannot cover. Everything you produce yourself is insulated from price rises completely. That is the heart of energy security. You generate your own, and you only buy the gap.
How solar protects you from price rises
This is the part that matters most when energy prices are volatile.
Think about how much electricity prices have moved in recent years. None of us can predict where they go next. But here is the comfort solar gives you. It does not matter as much what happens to the price, because you are only buying the bit you cannot produce.
- The power you make yourself costs you nothing once the system is paid for
- The only electricity exposed to price rises is your shortfall
- The bigger your system, the smaller that shortfall, and the less the market can hurt you
So while everyone else feels the full force of every price rise, you feel only a fraction of it. That is a powerful position to be in, and it gets more valuable every time prices climb.
A real system on a real house
Take this house. We have fitted sixteen panels here, which is a decent sized system for the property.
That array will produce a lot of electricity. I do not think this household will have an electricity bill for some time, certainly not until they switch from gas heating over to electricity in the future.
And here is the interesting part. Even when they do make that switch, depending on the system, they may well not have an electricity bill at all. They will be able to:
- Heat the house
- Cool the house, using air conditioning, which is a very efficient way to heat as well as cool
- Run the everyday demands of the home
And do all of it effectively for free, from their own generation and storage.
The long horizon
This is where solar really earns its place. People often focus on the upfront cost and stop there. I understand why, because the cost to get to this point can be considerable. I will never pretend otherwise.
But look at the timescale. A quality solar installation is built to keep producing for thirty, forty years and more. So that upfront cost buys you decades.
Set the cost against that horizon and it looks very different:
- One investment, made once
- Then thirty, forty plus years of little or no electricity bill
- All while prices for everyone else keep rising
That is significant. Few things you can buy for the home keep paying you back for that long. A roof full of panels does, quietly, every single day the sun is up.
Pairing solar with efficient heating
Energy security is strongest when the things drawing power are efficient. Air conditioning, which is an air to air heat pump, is one of the most efficient ways to heat a room, and it cools in summer too.
Run efficient heating like that off your own solar and battery, and you shrink the shortfall even further. The more of your home’s demand you can meet from your own generation, the less the grid price matters to you. Solar and efficient heating work well together for exactly that reason.
The bottom line
Solar gives you energy security by letting you make your own electricity and buy only the shortfall. That insulates most of your usage from rising prices, whatever the market does. The best time to fit panels is now, because they start producing the day they go up. The upfront cost is real, but set against thirty or forty years of little to no bill, it is an investment that keeps paying long after it has cleared its cost.
We design and fit solar, battery storage and efficient air conditioning across Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire. If you want to take control of your energy, call the office on 01480 400607 or request a survey through our website.
Jason Pope
Owner, Selec Group