Solar panels on all our houses

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Dominic
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Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Dominic »

European Recovery Fund to finance vast expansion of home solar panels

The Cyprus Mail has learned that one of the first projects to be financed by the €1 billion European Recovery Fund is expected to be the vast expansion of grants to put solar panels on Cyprus homes.

Currently, about €1,000 is provided as a grant to pay the costs of installing ph0tovoltaic panels on homes. The result has been that about 17,000 Cyprus homes currently operate solar panels, according to the energy ministry. Of these, 1,118 households and about 500 disadvantaged households have received grants – disadvantaged households may receive more than €1,000.

But the aim is to expand that number by three or four times, a source at the ministry told the Cyprus Mail, so that close to 50 per cent of Cyprus homes would soon have photovoltaic panels on their roofs.

Read the article and chat about it below...
 
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Kili01 »

This sounds like a great initiative! But the grant which the article mentions of €1000 won't go very far in covering the cost of a 3kw PV installation of 12 panels. Also I wonder how easy it would be to install these panels On the average Cyprus flat roofed house. Previously, I had a PV system installed at my house, but it had a pitched, tiled roof.

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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Devil »

Kili01 wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 11:08 am On the average Cyprus flat roofed house. Previously, I had a PV system installed at my house, but it had a pitched, tiled roof.
Dee
Even with a pitched, tiled, roof, it is very unlikely that you would get anything approaching optimum conversion of light into electricity. The theoretical ideal would be for the sunlight to reach the PV junctions in your panels at 90°. The practical implementation is to have the panels at a compromise angle, so that as much light as possible can be used. Remember, the angle of the light reaching the panels is very different in mid-December, compared to mid June.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Dominic »

Kili01 wrote: Sun Oct 11, 2020 11:08 am This sounds like a great initiative! But the grant which the article mentions of €1000 won't go very far in covering the cost of a 3kw PV installation of 12 panels. Also I wonder how easy it would be to install these panels On the average Cyprus flat roofed house. Previously, I had a PV system installed at my house, but it had a pitched, tiled roof.

Dee
How much do you think a 3Kw system costs?
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by cyprusmax47 »

Funny that the photo shows thermal panels to heat up water for central heating p.e. but the article talks about photo-voltaic modules..

It would be interesting if the article tells us how much more subsidy in future will be available. I have doubts that the number of houses in Cyprus is correct as 3x17000 houses = 51000 houses cannot be 50% of the Cypriot total amount of houses. (but maybe I am wrong!)

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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Dominic »

That would be a perfectly reasonable requirement, though I would obviously prefer MEU1 as well.

I honestly can't understand why so many people from the UK are living here without the proper paperwork. They are going to get bitten on the arse next year, and they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Kili01 »

I thought that the aim of this grant may be to get Cypriots to consider installing PV systems on their houses, Though perhaps some expats with correct residence docs may be eligible too.

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Post by mike strand2 »

I think it required a copy of my deeds, not MEU3. It also requires your building permit and copies of the past 6 bills from EAC.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Kili01 »

Hi Dominic,
A 3kw system which includes both PV panels, plus invertor, costs approx €5000.
It is quite a lengthy business assembling the necessary paperwork and getting the permissions needed. I have done this before at my previous house. The supplier helped me a lot with getting the permissions before any work can start and of course the EAC's permission is required.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by cyprusmax47 »

Green Air Paphos, specialists for PV installations, will undertake all the necessary paperwork for its customers, while EAC by law has to complete the formalities within 3 weeks after application. The price for a PV system varies as different components can be used and different guarantee times for inverters and modules come into play. For example you can install optimizer on every module to increase the production of electricity and the inverter can have 15 years warranty and communicate with your smart phone etc etc.

So the procedure is very simple and can be done with one visit at the Green Air office, after your property was inspected by the owner of Green Air, Mr. Christos Makariou, (Deputy Mayor Paphos)

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Post by Anarita John »

When our PV panels were installed by Greenair, we were not residents. Greenair looked after all of the paper work. As Max said, the process was seamless and went really well and we have been saving on our bills now for over a year. You do not have to be residents to have solar panels installed. Our main wait was for EAC to come and finally inspect and switch on our installation. Installed in June, switched on in August, but now they are supposed to switch you on within three weeks.
At maximum production, our panels will produce 30kw of electricity in a day. At present we are producing around 23kw. However, our panels are very dusty after the long dry summer and we are awaiting a few heavy downpours to clean them.
There have only been a few days this summer, during the very hot weather, when we have used slightly more electricity than we have produced. We have over 2000 kw surplus which we will use for heating in the winter and this will cost us less than 5 cents a kwh. Even on some days in December we were producing 20kw per day.

For us, it is not about how long it will take us to get our money back. It is about using our electricity for aircon and heating and not worrying about the cost. On our summer bill we used around 1300kw hours of electricity and our bill came to €36.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by johnandjen1 »

I’m interested to understand how one can take a snapshot at any point in time of how many surplus, if any, kw units are in the ‘bank’.

Ideally the meter would have a total units used display and a total units generated display to allow for a simple calculation.

I believe that it is advantageous to keep track of this figure on at least a monthly basis rather than waiting for the AIK bill to arrive.

Can anyone with PV panels inform me of the process please?

TiA, John
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Dominic »

You can just read the meter. There are more sophisticated things you can do, depending on your unit. I can look up ours online, if I remember the password.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by johnandjen1 »

So to be clear Dominic, I can look at the meter and see how many units I have in the ‘bank’ ?
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Post by Anarita John »

I know exactly how many units I have banked over the year. The meter has two readings, one for units used and one for units banked. In the first year, up to the point were EAC take units away in March, it was a case of a simple subtraction to find the difference between the two readings. In the second year, which is now, I take the readings and then subtract 1707.4 off the meter reading and 3576 off the bank meter reading. Then I find the difference between the two readings which tells me exactly how many units are in the bank.

The 1707.4 was the meter reading when EAC took the units we had banked off us in March and the 3576 was the units I gave to them in March. (We had been in the UK for winter)

I keep a spreadsheet of my daily meter readings and how many units we produce.

The phone app tells me how many units we produce each day. Today is the first day we have had any cloud and we produced 20.09 units. We exported 12 units to the grid and used around 9 solar units. 6.4 units went through the meter. Last night we ran the aircon on 25c in the bedroom and did three loads of washing plus quite a bit of ironing. Plus our swimming pool pump, which is 1.6 kw has been on for 6 hours.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by johnandjen1 »

Thank you for that clear explanation John.

I had heard that the EAC system had changed but not how this affected the previously simple calculation.
Although it is a tad more complex I can see how a simple excel sheet can aid keeping track.
Thanks again.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Dominic »

I found the advantage of keeping a spreadsheet is not so much to enable you to micromanage usage, but to highlight problems. If you have kept a long-term record, you will sooon notice an issue.
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by johnandjen1 »

Agree but need to watch your rows...........
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by mike strand2 »

johnandjen1 wrote: Tue Oct 13, 2020 8:19 am Agree but need to watch your rows...........
Do you mean by that, to not rely on excel, as it's been known to have internal errors? My computer manager made me aware, when some of my data went missing or slipped into another cell!
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Re: Solar panels on all our houses

Post by Dominic »

What on Earth are you going on about now? There's nothing wrong with Microsoft Excel.
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