Energy chat

The company fitting them will hopefully know the regs

has anyone managed to get solar installed in a conservation area - we have to apply for planning permissions apparently as we have an article 4 on our road (no no permitted development at all)

we might have done a couple of things so don’t want to attract attention, but if its an easy process and they work off photos or whatever I would like to look at sorting my water heating through solar

Nope.
Nobody in our village can get ‘em due to AOONB reasons. 2 miles away is a massive Solar Farm, but it’s off a back road in a valley.

We’re next door to a conservation area, Ironbridge. They cannot have panels.

As I understand it it depends on the rules in your particular conservation area. If you’ve got an Article 4 direction saying you can’t then, well, you can’t.

As far as I’m aware there are no Article 4 directions for the conservation area I live in, so the previous owner of the house re-clad half the roof using modern concrete tiles and inserted Velux windows too and the council wasn’t fussed at all about that. We then changed the front door and windows and they didn’t care about that either. I expect they wouldn’t mind if I wanted to put solar on the rear roof (that’s the bit that faces south) but just because it would be OK for me wouldn’t influence whether it was OK for you, I’m afraid.

Article 4 just says permission for everything, lots in the street have put in upvc look alike sashes and seem to have got away with it but no solar as yet so perhaps I will wait until a brave soul gives it a try

will the panels be facing or visible from the street?

nope - we border 2 street but panels would be on the back (more sun there) so not seen from either

Seems like an argument to grant planning permission then.

If they won’t be seen you could just fit them and claim they were already there when you moved in :slight_smile:

Interesting idea if not cheaper than Go/Intelligent for battery filling, they have the overnight period at a different time to Go.

They don’t mention the Fit rate in that link?

I was talking to Octopus last week. Given we will have decent generation but a lecky car is unlikely for us in the short/medium term, they recommended Flux.

Presumably you add in a standard outgoing tariff.