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Improve my home How to retrofit
Retrofit step 4: Generation
By generating your own energy you can power your home, your heating and even your electric vehicle.
Generate your own renewable energy
If your home is warm thanks to good insulation, ventilated and running an efficient heating system, you’ll next want to look at generating your own renewable energy.
Solar panels – also known as solar PV – are a versatile technology that can work at different scales to provide various benefits in your home. This includes electricity for running appliances, heating (now that it’s electric) and hot water.
It can even decarbonise your transport by charging an electric vehicle. Soon, more and more vehicles will be required to be electric, so this is another way to future-proof your home.
Most solar panels are installed on the roof, though if your garden is big enough and there is space, sometimes they can be installed there.
A hot water tank with an immersion coil (a feature of heat pumps) can be utilised to draw any excess energy going to the grid for hot water heating. If the solar generation is large enough, a battery can be fitted to make sure you benefit from all your solar production rather than sending it to the grid.
Renewable energy
Since the sources of renewable energy are free, the energy collected by the likes of solar panels also doesn’t cost us anything to use. The more energy we can generate for ourselves from renewable sources, the lower our energy bills will be.