I was wondering whether, and/or at what point, solar power could make sense here in the UK.
I found a website that calculates overall solar energy production depending on where and how the solar panels are sited. This seems to suggest that 'pay-back' would be around the 12-15 year mark.
So I was wondering why, e.g., Frank Sanns reckon it's an answer for everybody, everywhere. Re-calculating for his latitude, Pittsburgh, 40N and, say, Richmond, 38N, are similar and show that during winter months solar panels installed at a 35 degree pitch would generate 3 to 4 times the energy as would the same solar panels at my latitude of 51N.
In fact, 4kWp would produce around 1 single kWh/day here during winter months. Gee! That'll really cover a lot of my ~25kWh/day [winter] consumption!
Agreed, the story changes during the summer and 4kWp should be generating some 12kWh/day or so which would be most, if not all, my daily consumption during those months.
So it's a nice idea for the summer months here, but is a piddle of energy during winter. I guess the secret to solar energy is to be born in a country at a lower latitude! You should be getting payback periods of just 5 years or so, I guess. I can only dream of that ....