Who would have believed it?
Solar heating catching on in the UK
With the jury out on whether it a negative or positive development, reports are increasingly showing that more and more UK families are taking the alternative heating methods much more seriously than they used to.
A combination of a genuine desire to take care of the environmental issues that all Uk citizens are becoming aware as well as the need to cut energy costs and way that they can have led many British families to take the decision to invest in solar energy. Within the last three months close to 6,000 UK homes have invested in installing solar panels.
While there is an initial investment involved families are being buoyed to make the decision to go solar by the fact that they can earn around fifty pence p for every unit of energy they generate. That this year's hot summer and cold winter was not a one-off is now common knowledge.
The Energy Saving Trust is now confident that homeowners are not only going to save money but actually earn money from the energy that they generate and for the next 25 years at least. They have even gone on to estimate that the average property is liable to generate energy worth around £800 pounds annually. A sum that will go a long way to subsidising anticipated energy bills for the winter.
Those families who can afford to take the long term view will surely benefit from the financial risk that they are taking by laying out the money to install solar panels. Those who are more skeptical of the benefits of solar power or simply don't have the cash to invest in solar panels, can actually have them installed for free. However there is a downside, as the companies who install the panels "for free" retain ownership, and earn the profits from excess energy generated the through the potentially lucrative tariffs that can be earned feeding in to the National Grid.
Installing solar panels will cost between £6,000 and £12,000 to buy and install, depending on the size of the property and the solar panels themselves. A battery containing eight panels is the most popular. An eight panel battery will generate around 2.5 Kw annually, and will cost around £10,000 to purchase and install.
Bearing in mind that 90% of existing solar panels are expected to last for 30 years, make installing solar panels a very worthwhile investment for the long term. Experts are now saying that banks should offer mortgages on them like they do on homes, especially when taking into account that half the homes in Europe will be using solar energy in some form within the next decade.
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