Have you thought about installing PV panels on your roof? Now that you have been observing your electricity consumption in the Social Power Plus app, you might start to consider how you can use sunlight to source your daytime electricity use (or even night time, with a battery!).
We have curated some useful resources to get you started and to avoid the common hurdles of information overwhelm.
Here are the first things you want to consider:
- What does the overall process look like? Check out Energieschweiz for an overview and cost-benefit analysis: https://www.energieschweiz.ch/gebaeude/solaranlagen/
- Calculate the potential of your roof: https://www.uvek-gis.admin.ch/BFE/sonnendach/
- Consider future features so you can plan for them later such as: battery, heatpump, or an electric vehicle. They don’t have to be part of the current installation, but considering them now makes it easier to adapt the system to integrate them later.
Curious to go further? Contact a Swiss solar cooperative to get an offer. They work in all regions, have very attractive pricing, you can get directly involved in the planning, installation and knowledge sharing, and their network supports multiple aspects of the project including technical, financial and social. Of course, your local utility also offers support.
- Solargenossenschaften: https://www.sses.ch/de/solargenossenschaften/
- Swissolar for lots of useful Questions and Answers: https://www.swissolar.ch/
- Informationen, Angebote und Fördergelder bei Stadtwerk Winterthur: https://stadtwerk.winterthur.ch/geschaeftskundschaft/angebote/fotovoltaik
- Informationen zum Anschluss einer PV-Anlage in Schaffhausen (EKS): https://www.eks.ch/kundencenter/solaranlagen/merkblatt-anschluss-von-energieerzeugungsanlagen
- Informationen, Angebote und Fördergelder bei TB Wil: https://deineenergie.ch/solarstrom/
Once you get several offers, you can send them to Energieschweiz and they will assess them for you and provide feedback on the technical and financial differences.
Personal experiences
Of course, the installation of a PV system is different for every house and every customer. Nevertheless, it is exciting to hear how other households have experienced this process and what practical tips they have. Here you can find a report about a PV system after one year of operation.
Talking to someone who has recently completed the process in his multi-family building, he mentioned how surprised he was “by how cheap PV has become. It really makes a lot of financial sense with a return on investment under 10 years, since we are using so much of what we produce ourselves.”
The price of the electricity for his solar system, including insurance, smart meter installation and PV installation was less than half of the utility provided electricity. Further he had a great experience working with a solar cooperative as “we could become directly involved in learning how to install a PV, even get a certificate for this skill and helped out on other installation as part of the network of the cooperative.” However, he offers a hint for those interested “start planning early, as due to supply chain shortages, covid, etc., it can take up to a year to get the project completed”. But he encourages us to “Do it! We need more PV.”