With energy bills rising and house prices sinking, the idea that you can add value to your home and cut your electricity bill at the same time is appealing. But will installing wind turbines, solar panels and biomass boilers really save you money?
John-Paul Flintoff in The Sunday Times reckons so. He cites the Shepherd-Cross family as an example of the economic sense of turning your home into a power station. They have spent £40,000 – reduced to £27,000 by now-extinct government grants – and expect to recoup their costs in a decade through lower energy bills. Sounds good, but bear in mind the government grant limit has been cut sharply. That makes the turnaround time on your investment significantly longer – closer to 20 years.
And although new government proposals mean houses producing their own power will be able to sell any excess back to the grid, how much money you get depends on your supplier. British Gas buys at 5p per kilowatt (it charges 12.27p to users) while Scottish Power offers 4.25p, against a charge of 11.2p. You also need an export meter fitted to work out how much you’re sending back. Some providers including Scottish Power and Scottish and Southern will provide the meter for free, but others charge anything up to £200.
And will it really add value to your house? Speaking in The Sunday Times, Jonathan Haward of County Homesearch believes that installing a 25kW hydro turbine – that’s water wheel to you and me – would be “putting £200,000 onto the value of the property”. But while a working water wheel may well add a bit of character to your property, £200,000 seems a tad optimistic in these days of plunging prices.
If you’re still keen to go green after all that, do bear in mind that this is new technology and Britain is still trying to get the hang of it. Aside from the cost, be prepared for a lot of hassle. “If my experience is anything to go by, anyone thinking of installing a pellet boiler – or most other forms of renewable energy sources – would need to be green to the point of obsession, and have deep pockets and a huge amount of time on their hands,” warns Dominic Murphy in The Guardian.
Perhaps the most telling indicator of whether green gadgets are worth the money or not is the people who buy them. Wealthy retirees dominate the industry so much that when Murphy was getting quotes, “one supplier even suggested that it was odd for his client to want precise figures: the sort of people that get involved in this, he said, did not usually worry too much about money”.
The price of going green
Item, Set-up cost*, Annual saving**, Years to recoup cost
1kW Solar PV, £5,000, £130, 38
3kW Solar PV, £15,000, £350, 43
1kW wind turbine, £3,000, £150, 20
2.5kW wind turbine, £10,000, £350, 29
1kW hydro, £4,000, £150, 27
3kW hydro, £12,000, £400, 30
Ground source heat, £12,000, £750, 16
*Excluding grants **Estimate
Source: Low Carbon Building Programm/Uswitch