The Government launched the Feed In Tariffs last year. This means that householders can generate income from electricity-producing technologies above and beyond the actual savings to themselves. I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of the actual scheme here but just give some information about my new PV system (that photovolatics – i.e. panels for generating electricity).Since there will (hopefully) be some building extensions around the house, thus restricting scaffolding, and the internal walls are back to brick (so cabling is easy), we decided to install our PV system early. Oh, and the summer is here so might as well start generating now rather than in the autumn. We’ve gone for nine 250W Sanyo HITE01 panels.

To start from the beginning and very basics…
The panels produce DC electricity and are connected to an inverter which we have situated in the loft space. Ours is bright yellow so cannot be missed. The inverters primary function is to convert the DC current to AC. It also manages changes in the DC input to optimise the output and records lots of statistics for us.The output AC current from the inverted travels down to the a generation meter and into a dedicated RCBO on the consumer unit. It could go into its own MCB on an RCB protected side of the consumer unit instead. Don’t worry if none this makes sense as the installer will do everything and provided you with relevant certificates before they finish.
We will get paid for everything we generate (~43p per unit), what we are deemed to export (~3p per unit) (deemed to be 50% of that generated) and won’t pay for what we actually use of that which we have generated (~13p per unit not bought).
Over the first 9 days I’ve averaged just under 10kW a day or around £4.50 a day in revenues/savings. We do have very long days at the moment although it has been pretty inclement since the panels went in.
