I never received any subsidies for my installation. They stopped handing them out in 2013 (after having scaled them back to almost nothing in the 4 years before that), so my only profit was my electricity meter running backwards. But even considering that, it was still worth it, because as said I would have broken even in 8 years.

But then the government started to realize they had been overly generous with their subsidies, to a point that they had created a pit of more than 10 billion euro. So they want that back now, and their way of doing that is increasing everybody's electricity bill, also the people who never owned any PV panels.

The really disgusting part is that the real culprits here were not the families who had put 20 PV panels onto their roof, but rather larger companies who had put thousands and thousands of panels onto the roofs of their malls, factories, silos and even plain in the fields onto special solar trackers. The government subsidies raked in more money than actually producing grain or something onto those fields.

So the companies won 3 times: they created a cost which they can deduct from their taxes (usually "green loans"), they get government subsidies for the produced power for at least 20 years and they get their own electricity for free. How's that for a hattrick?

As said, the contracts for the subsidies that were drawn up lasted for at least 20 years, so today they companies are still making enormous amounts of money on the back or the normal people who now see the price of their electricity go up as a result. And of course, for the normal people, all the measures were taken retrospectively to existing installations.

That's the cost of green energy for you. And they they wonder why I'm all for atomic energy. (well, the new Thorium Molten Salt Reactors (MSR) anyway)



Even without the subsidies, it WAS still worth it. But then they killed the market with their extra taxes. If you don't have these kinds of restraints in the UK, then I would say: go for it, you'll be very happy once you have them. But as said, they problem is you can't trust the government they won't change the rules of the game.

To save the market of the solar panels somewhat, they've now made the "ecological rules" to which you have to comply when building a new house SO strict, you're obliged to put PV panels onto your roof or otherwise you simply CANNOT comply and will be fined (a lot!) for it. (all in the spirit of a "greener environment" of course)
They call this the "EPB" system, which looks at a total number of factors of the construction (thickness of walls/roof, used materials, insulation factor, ventilation, type of heating, water supply, length of hot water tubing in the house etc) and distills all that into something they call an "EPB number". The lower this number is, the better the house is insulated (or more self-sustaining), but of course a lot more expensive to build. A house with an EPB number of 20 or less is considered to be a passive house. Five years ago, you could still have an EPB of 100 and get away with it, but they decreased that number every year. Now you need to have at least 50 or less or you'll be fined. You can never reach 50 simply by adding more insulation. You NEED something like a heat pump, PV panels or automatic ventilation (and possibly all three combined). This adds a LOT to the cost of a new house, even disregarding the fact that the cost of all the other, normal building materials have a least doubled in the last 10 years.
Because of this, building a house, even a small one, has become unpayable for young starters who don't get help from their parents. This was not the case up to ten years ago. It's sad really.