You may see adverts for solar panels from time to
time and may be encouraged to buy them, in part to reduce your electricity
consumption but mostly to qualify for the feed-in tariff currently available in
the UK and some other countries. You may also come across sales stands in
public places such as supermarkets and garden centres. If you do, be careful.
Following a visit by a salesman we installed ten
panels. While they plainly work, the output from the panels is so much lower
than the estimate that they were obviously miss-sold. The projected output was 1,974 kWh – yet the actual output for the six
brightest months of the year was only 556 kWh. My projections show that at this
rate the panels will require 39 years to pay for themselves. Since the feed-in
tariff stops after 25 years this is not going to happen.
I have pointed
out these and other facts to the company, Go Solar Now. They have ignored both
my letters, the second having been signed for on delivery to them. But they clearly
know where I live. In this period they have sent me two letters, neither of
them referring to mine. The first was a
Christmas card containing a letter.
‘We are hoping to introduce a pricing structure that will give returns of
9% or greater – try getting that from a bank!’
Try getting
that from Go Solar Now! At the moment we are not on course for a return of 2%,
which we could easily exceed from a bank.
The second
letter outlined a maintenance plan. Looking down the list of items to be
checked I was amazed: the installers had
told me that maintenance was not required since the system had no moving parts.
How things change when the company wants to boost its income stream!
To add insult
to injury I have also received a phone call from my energy company, EDF,
suggesting that I must have made a mistake reading the meter. Given the installation,
they said, the reading was 35% lower than they expected. Their advice was to
contact the installers.
Tried that. Since
the company refuses to reply my next stop will be Trading Standards.
Over here the electrical provider reads all the meters. Not long after we had our panels installed they tried to charge us for an "estimated" reading based on the previous bill. Told them I wouldn't pay until a proper reading was done.
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that the panels aren't working as promised but there are alot of companies riding on the solar energy wave. To be honest, I haven't really scrutinised our bill but we've been in credit all along. Was thinking about transferring the credit for electricity to our gas bill but will see as we're heading into winter and our solar panel output will probably fall.