Well, after what seems like years of research and visits from reps and getting quotes over the phone, we have finally joined the solar community! 
The final stage of the installation took place today and, as long as it all works ok - and it appears to, I would recommend GoSolar Newcastle to anyone. They were frighteningly efficient. They like to do the hot water and solar power on different days so they are not all tripping over each other on the roof so the hot water was installed a week or so ago then we were told the solar power panels would be put on the roof on Friday. The guys knocked at the door on Friday morning at 7.45am and they were finished before 9am, I didn't even have time to get my camera out to get a shot of them all scrambling on the roof for the blog! As they left they told us the person to fit the meter would be due in a couple of days then, half an hour later there was a knock at the door and there he was.
We are now having to change our habits a bit to get the most out of the free power from the sun. The government buy back scheme rate is so low these days that the way to work is to use your power while you are producing it, this means running the dishwasher or washing machine, charging phones and tablets in the middle of the day,for example, instead of overnight. It is surprisingly difficult to remember to do these things, we are obviously more set in our ways than we thought and the one thing I don't think we will manage is cooking while we are producing power, it feels like going back to the 1960s if we eat our main meal at lunchtime.
The most exciting part of all this is the little monitor which tells us how much power we are producing at any given time. I can't stop looking at it and telling Ian how many watts we are getting on an hourly basis, I find it completely fascinating and am becoming a real solar bore.
Zoe and Shaun are coming for the weekend - they have no idea what fun they have in store!