I have had some lovely conversations this week with David who has been trialling one of our infrared heating panels with his solar PV electricity, this is his review – using infrared heating with solar pv panels .
“Earlier this year we purchased a 600 W infrared panel which we have tried in the sitting room. We have been pleased with the performance and, based on this experience, are now planning to heat most of our rooms with similar panels, ceiling-mounted.
Our present array of 9 pv Solar Panels provides us with hot water (to 70 degrees on a sunny day, lukewarm on cloudy days) and do the bulk of our cooking using energy from the Sun.
The new battery storage pv system we are planning will run one 600 W panel for around 10 hours a day, or the equivalent. It will need around 7 hours of Sunlight to fully re-charge and my records from last year show that during last winter most weeks had at least 2 days of good sunshine. If we double the number of batteries we can run two heaters, and so on. Again, cost will be offset by FIT payments over 20 years. Because the FIT rate has been lowered, this will only give an annual return of around 5.5% but it is still a better rate than any investment scheme available at the moment.”
We look forward to an update next year when the extra solar panels are fitted along with battery storage and electric infrared heating panels.
