Well, we now have a power station on our roof!
In the words of Hannibal Smith (off the A-Team) – ‘I love it when a plan comes together!’
So, the PV solar panels have been successfully installed and most of the wiring has been completed. The one snag is that they’ll have to come back on Friday to finish off, but it’s nearly there. We’re one of the first homes in Gloucester City to get solar panels and it’s another major step in the life of the house! The panels take up almost the full width of the roof and maybe 2/3 of the slope from the eaves to the ridge.
The main issue was that the inverter (which converts the DC current produced by the panels to AC current which can be fed back into the grid and which most appliances use), wasn’t delivered to the Malmesbury (near Swindon) head office last Friday. This wasn’t necessarily a problem as they said it could be delivered to our house today. Problem was that the courier delivered it to Malmesbury! Not very useful there when the panels are being installed in Gloucester!
So, one of the installers got on the phone and gave them a bit of an ear full (this was all happening while I was checking out progress at the top of the scaffolding!). The supplier then said they would just taxi it over from Malmesbury to my place! Well, this was done but when the package arrived, it was damaged. So, they’ll be back on Friday with a new inverter which will (fingers crossed) finish off the installation.
Had a bit of shock when I got home and Claire started talking about planning permission being required for the panels if they were more than 30mm away from the roof! Well, we just checked and permission is needed if the panels are more than 200mm away from the roof! They’re actually about 190mm away and are on a metal frame, which is itself fixed through the tile roof and into the rafters underneath. All the holes have been sealed inside and around each fixing screw and there is also a rubber seal on top, so it should be water tight.
There’s also a very tempting looking red button by the fuse box! I’ve got visions of the panels ejecting off the roof if we press it though! : ) We’re going to have a full run through on Friday (I hope), so we should find out what it does then!
Overall, it was a very efficient installation and if the inverter had been any good the whole process would have been just a 9 to 5 job.
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