Feasibility Study of a Sustainable Roof Top Domestic Solar Energy System in the UK

This chapter investigates the feasibility of a rooftop Solar Photovoltaic (PV) system for domestic use in the UK. With ever rising energy prices in the UK, and the disruption to energy markets due to recent extensions to the energy price cap, partly as a result of economic factors such as Brexit and the geo-political trends in the European Energy market that has been primarily driven by the conflict in Ukraine, an investigation took place to understand the feasibility of installing roof top domestic solar PV panels and to determine payback periods of these systems. The application chosen was a typical grid connected domestic three-bedroom house. The research investigates several scenarios in order to develop a model, which defines typical payback periods for a variety of systems. The premise was to understand if a system could pay back in reasonable timeframes that would be attractive to a domestic user, who currently faces an energy crisis as well as a cost of living crisis in the UK. Using global irradiation data from PhotoVoltaic Geographical Information System (PVGIS) and typical electricity demand profile data, this chapter determines the current payback periods of rooftop solar installations using a 4 kW solar array. It can be shown that the payback periods are viable, being as low as 6–7 years.