Andrew's home

Andrew's house is a handsome one, slate roofs running across several planes, and he was not going to let a solar system spoil it. The finish mattered as much as the output.

So we used AIKO all black panels and laid them out to sit with the slate rather than against it. The Sigenergy inverter and battery went on the wall in the same spirit, tidy and deliberate rather than wherever was quickest.

It is a big system. 29 panels at 14.2 kWp spread across several roof planes, running into a 10 kW Sigenergy SigenStor hybrid inverter with 17.5 kWh of battery storage behind it.

Andrew took the full set with it. A Sigenergy HomePro Backup Gateway, so the house keeps running through a power cut, and a 7 kW Sigenergy EV charger. That combination lets the system choose when it buys electricity, filling the battery and the car while the tariff is cheap and leaving the expensive hours alone.

It is forecast to generate 12,459 kWh a year and to be worth around £3,600 in the first year once savings and export income are counted, which is about £300 a month, with payback at roughly seven years.

Twenty nine panels across several roofs usually means a long job. This one took two days, with the scaffolding, roofing and electrical teams all working to the same plan.