Leeds IT professional explains trick to saving £2,300-a-year off his energy bill with solar panels
An IT professional has urged Yorkshire Post readers to consider rooftop solar, after his energy bill came to just £32 for the last six months.
Phil Gibbs had 14 solar panels and a battery installed in December 2021 at his detached family home in Bramhope, north of Leeds.
Mr Gibbs said: “With retirement looming, we wanted to invest in the house to make it as cheap to run as possible.
“My thought process was to get all this stuff in now, while I can afford to pay for it, and then when we’re on pensions we’re not going to be forking out.
“At the time, energy costs were getting quite high, so it was partly the finances and partly the climate situation - cut the costs and fly the green flag for a bit.”
Mr Gibbs and his family have relatively high electricity usage as they have two electric vehicles.
But by charging them overnight, after storing power in the battery, and selling the solar energy back to their supplier, Octopus, annual energy bills have dropped from around £2,400 a year to just £64.
“All the electricity that the solar panels produce go to export, with Octopus Energy paying us 15p for whatever we export,” he explained.
“Our electricity over the last six months is £32.64. It cost £17,000 to install the whole thing but we’re saving £2,300 a year.”
Mr Gibbs said provided homeowners can install a battery and have a smart meter he would certainly recommend solar panel savings.
“I would say given those numbers go for it,” he explained, “the only caveat I would put on it, is at the moment the biggest savings come from the import and export.
“That’s down to having a house battery, however I don’t know how much longer Octopus are going to give us that rate.”
This comes as the Government is trying to make rooftop panels a key part of its solar roadmap going forward.
The future homes standard (FHS), which will be published in autumn, is expected to require new residential properties to have solar panels by default.
Ed Miliband recently said: “Solar panels can save people hundreds of pounds off their energy bills, so it is just common sense for new homes to have them fitted as standard.
“So many people just don’t understand why this doesn’t already happen. With our plans, it will.”
However, CPRE, the countryside charity, has urged Mr Miliband to use this to stop huge solar farms being built on agricultural land.
In particular, North and East Yorkshire have seen a raft of planning applications for rural solar farms being submitted, while a report from the charity recently found that an area the size of 1,300 football pitches of prime agricultural land has been lost to solar farms.
Campaigns lead Jackie Copley said: “CPRE has long campaigned for widespread rooftop solar, which would harness the potential of the UK’s roofs to generate huge amounts of clean and truly sustainable energy.
“With rooftop solar, meaningful climate action does not come at the expense of a thriving and beautiful countryside.
“This is in contrast to mega solar farms, which damage natural landscapes and productive farmland.
“The current approach, which has seen 59 per cent of mega solar farms built on productive farmland, is short-sighted and wasteful.
“We're needlessly sacrificing irreplaceable agricultural land when rooftops, car parks, and brownfield sites could deliver even greater amounts of energy.”
“We now urge the government to go further, setting a target for generating at least 60 per cent of the UK’s solar energy from rooftops, making it easier for warehouses and other industrial buildings to install rooftop solar panels, and speeding up the rollout of new grid connections.”