Domestic & Commercial Solar Panels

Solar panels are made up of cells which have a layer of silicon in them that converts light energy into electricity. There are two main types of silicon, monocrystalline and polycrystalline. Monocrystalline is the most efficient, though panels using this may cost more. Polycrystalline is less expensive; however, the panels tend to be larger and less efficient.

PV is short for Photovoltaic which comes from Latin: Photo meaning light + Voltaic meaning Energy.

Solar Energy harnesses the natural power of the sun, not only does it mean the electricity you are using is clean because fossils fuels aren't burned to make it, it is also renewable and abundant. You can also save money as you are not forking out for ever increasing energy bills and Government incentives can help you even more.

This does depend on a lot of variables but for a 4kW system, which is most commonly installed on a domestic property you should expect to pay in the region of £6,500. Contact us now for a free no-obligation survey to find out more.

Yes! Solar is still a great investment, for commercial systems we always design our systems around your energy usage to maximise the financial benefits. The price of energy will continue to rise, solar energy will ‘futureproof’ your company against this.

Each kWp of solar PV will produce anywhere from 800 to 1200kWh per year. There are a lot of factors which determine this figure but we can produce an accurate estimation based on historic weather conditions at that location and the system specifics such as pitch of the roof and which way it faces.

No, panels can face any direction apart from North, the yield on a south facing system is traditionally higher however an East/West array will generally produce a lower yield but for more hours in a day as the sun will catch each roof in turn as it traverses the sky.

Empower Energy are here to help you in the unfortunate case of something going wrong. The panels themselves come with a warranty for efficiency of 20-25 years. Our inverter systems normally come with a standard 12 year warranty but we can extend this very easily to 20 years.

Solar panels produce what is called Direct Current or DC for short. An Inverter’s job is to take the DC current and transform it into a power source that you can use; Alternating current (AC for short).

We recommend the Solar Edge Inverter system, with almost every other inverter the panels are linked in a similar way to Christmas tree lights, if one fails or does not work properly, it will affect the rest of the system. So, for example, if something shades one panel, this will affect the performance of every other panel attached. With our system, each panel works independently and at its maximum efficiency and is not affected by its neighbours. This can produce a higher overall system yield than other inverter systems. Our system also can monitor each panel individually, so if there ever is an issue, we will know about it immediately. More often than not, with a traditional inverter the first time someone realises there is a problem is when they submit their generation readings every quarter to the energy supplier.