Is Solar Battery Storage Worth It In The High Peak, Stockport And Greater Manchester?

What The Panels Do, And What Solar Battery Storage Adds

Panels make electricity in daylight. Your house uses what it needs at that moment, and the surplus either charges a battery or goes out to the grid. The battery hands that stored power back in the evening, after the panels have stopped and the kettle, the oven and the lights come on.

On the survey Lewis works that sum on your own usage, so the value of the panels is worked out for your house and the units it buys.

Your Bills Come Before Your Roof

We look at your bills before the roof. They show how much electricity the house uses and, with a smart meter, at what times of day. If the house sits empty in the day and busy from five o’clock, a battery has evening demand to cover. If someone is home through the day, more of the panels’ output gets used as it is made, and a smaller battery may do.

A smart meter’s half-hourly readings make that exact, and without one, a year of paper bills still shows the size of the job. A home office in Marple and a house in Stockport that sits empty until six can use the same electricity in a year and still need different batteries.

We size the battery from your usage and your tariff, and the payback maths goes into the written quote. For some houses the straight answer is to wait, and you should hear that before anyone books a scaffold.

A Battery Sized To Pay Back

A battery earns its keep on the units it stores and hands back. Size it beyond the surplus your panels make on an ordinary day, or beyond what the house uses after dark, and part of it sits empty while you have paid for all of it.

Three things set the right battery size, and they all come off your bills and your roof:

We work the size out from those three, and the written quote shows the battery we chose and the payback workings behind it, so you can see why it isn’t one size bigger.

Shade, Cloud And The State Of The Roof

On High Peak streets, a tall stone stack, a neighbour’s gable, a tree line or the valley side can each take sun off part of a slope for part of the day. The layout should keep panels out of those patches. MCS’s shade method says near shading has a considerable effect on output and should be avoided, and that a system should not be sold where shade would hit it hard (MCS, MGD 005 Solar PV Shade Evaluation Procedure, Issue 1.0).

Cloud is the obvious worry in the Peak District. Panels still generate on a cloudy day, at a lower output, and a design for your roof should use generation figures for your own location.

Old roofs need a look before anything goes on them. We check the roof’s condition at the survey, because slipped slates or tired battens are cheaper to hear about before the scaffold goes up than after.

Summer, Winter And A Battery That Works In Both

Panels make most of their year’s electricity between spring and early autumn, when the days are long, and far less in December. In summer the battery stores the afternoon surplus for the evening. In winter the panels may cover little more than the daytime use, and the surplus that would charge the battery shrinks.

A time-of-use tariff changes that picture. The battery can fill up on cheaper overnight units and run the house through the expensive hours, so it keeps working through the dark months. We put both seasons into the payback workings, so the figure you read in the quote covers a full year on your roof, from a south slope in Marple to a hillside terrace in Glossop.

Planning: The Borough Or The National Park

The High Peak has two planning authorities. Outside the National Park, the decision sits with High Peak Borough Council, which looks after 32 conservation areas; homes inside the Park go to the Peak District National Park Authority.

Stockport And Greater Manchester Addresses

Stockport Council handles planning for Marple, Mellor and the rest of its borough, and Manchester City Council for the city. Panels on a roof slope there come under the same permitted development rules; a listed building or an Article 4 direction is what changes the answer, and we look up both for your address before the design is drawn.

Adding A Battery To Panels You Already Have

What Happens On Install Week

Install week runs in a fixed order:

1. 1

   1. Scaffold And Protection

   The scaffold goes up first, and the garden, paths and drive get covered and protected before anyone climbs.

2. 2

   2. Rails And Panels

   Our specialist install partner fixes the roof hooks and rails, then clamps the panels in the layout from your design.

3. 3

   3. Inverter, Battery And Wiring

   The inverter and the battery go where the design put them, and the wiring is connected and tested.

4. 4

   4. Switch-On And Handover

   We walk you through the controls, register the warranties in your name and send the network operator its notice; for a larger system we get its approval before install week starts.

Our own engineer designs the job and runs it from start to finish, so the person who measured your roof is the one who answers for it on install day.

Solar, A Battery And A Heat Pump

You’ll read that “heat pumps only work with solar and batteries”. A heat pump heats the house without them. If one is on your list, though, the order of the work matters: plan it now and the panels, the battery and the wiring can be sized with the heat pump in mind, so nothing needs redoing.

A battery can also store cheaper overnight electricity on a time-of-use tariff, and the payback workings in your quote take that into account. Our full renewables package puts the heat pump, the panels and the battery under one design.

Lewis designs heat pumps and solar as one system, so if both are on your list, one survey covers the two and the design shows how they share the electricity.

Warranties And Paperwork To Ask About

Before you sign with anyone, get these in writing:

Before You Compare Solar Quotes

Solar panels and batteries supplied and installed in a home carry 0% VAT until 31 March 2027. Since 1 February 2024 that also covers a battery added to panels you already have (HMRC, VAT Notice 708/6, sections 2.1, 2.7 and 2.19). Kit bought supply-only doesn’t get the relief.

Set any two quotes side by side and check that each one names:

We put the design, the payback workings and a fixed price in writing after one survey visit. If you have a slate roof or a slope that faces east, west or north, our guide to solar on slate and north-facing roofs covers the extra checks.

Our surveys run from our base in New Mills across the High Peak, Stockport and Greater Manchester.

The solar PV and battery storage pages go deeper on each part.