Domestic Solar

Domestic Solar PV can be one of the best investments a home owner will ever make. With home energy costs continuing to increase year on year and no sign of stopping, a PV system for your home and family is one way you can protect yourselves from these increases.

Carmichael Browns offer an entirely bespoke system design service, where one of our advisers will work with you, providing relevant and up to date advice based on your own needs.

Our 30+ years of engineering background means we can use our experience to design the best performing system for your property taking into account, location, orientation and pitch of your roof.  Don’t be fooled by some uninformed sales talk, choosing the right components for your system is crucial to maximizing the performance of your installation.  Many installers will use a kit type supply where generic products are used on all roof types due to supply contracts with manufacturers. Carmichael Browns design your system completely bespoke, working with many different manufactures of panels, inverters and mounting systems to ensure we can select the best solution for your home and budget without prejudice, and thanks to our history and buying power we can provide the highest quality equipment at the lowest possible prices. Click here to learn more about some of the equipment we use.

Our domestic solar installation process is made simple by our dedicated design and office staff.  We carry out a free site survey on your property, providing a no obligation quotation based on the discussed needs and requirements. Once agreed we manage the entire process for you.

Start saving with a Solar PV system from Carmichael Browns with the below simple process designed to keep things simple yet allowing for the highest standards of work.

• Request a survey
• Initial visit and discussions
• Quotation accepted
• Pre-installation technical survey
• Installation carried out within 1 day by our highly experienced engineering teams including testing and commissioning
• Handover pack provided including MCS certification, warranty and commissioning documentation

Is my house suitable?

PV is a great addition to almost all UK home, however there are a few simple things to check first to ensure your property is suitable for a PV system to perform properly.

A perfect home for a Solar PV system is a large, south facing roof with an angle between 20º and 45º.  However you will be surprised how little the performance will drop when you deviate from these parameters. For example many systems are installed on East/West facing roof spaces with a minimal reduction in performance (less than 5%), using 2 different aspects like this can sometimes in fact increase the performance of the system with regards to energy savings as the two roof spaces will track the suns movement throughout the day, meaning that the energy created is spread out over a longer period of time, which allows for higher degree of consumption in the home.

This page is a simple guide, for more information please visit out FAQ page or give us a call.

The main barrier for PV system performance is not so much the direction but the location of the roof.  If your roof top is heavily shaded by a building or immovable tree, then a PV system might not be best for you.  Maybe better to consider a Heat Pump or Biomass Boiler for your energy requirements.

How much roof space do I need?

A maximum domestic size PV system is 4 kWp, typically being made up of 16 x 250W PV panels.  Each panel is around 1.7m x 1m, meaning around 27 square meters is needed for the biggest systems, however this can be achieved by using a smaller amount of higher efficiency panels such as the Sun Power 327W model, (12 of them only required to achieve 4 kWp) although this might increase the cost slightly, visit our equipment page for more information.   Of course if you don’t have a big roof a 1 kWp system can still be achieved from only 8 square meters.

Will my roof be OK to support the panels?

Due to the fact that the panels are not very heavy (less than 21kg in most cases) and also spread evenly across the roof top, almost all roof tops are more than able to support their weight, however of course we will asses this as part of our initial assessment of the property and when required can arrange for an independent structural engineers to prepare calculations on the potential loadings before any work is carried out.

Case Study– Miss Spearman – Maidstone

Miss Spearman opted for a 4 kWp system using the popular REC modules.

Carmichael Browns were her choice of supplier after receiving some pretty high prices for the same equipment and was unsure about some of the statements and information given by others.

She also remarked that she “felt confident with the company as everything was backed up in black & white’ not just sales talk. When asked what her opinion was of the installation team?  Miss Spearman simply replied “Brilliant, neat, quiet, tidy and the whole thing was done before I knew it”