Will I save money with Solar Panel?

bettina66

I have had a chap round form https://www.solarhomeenergy.co.uk

He says that for £6400 they can install an all singing all dancing solar panel that will reduce my total energy bill by 30%. It will heat the hot water and he reckons that during the summer the boiler won't come on at all.

My gas bill is £700 per year and electric is £400 per year. So he says I will save £330 per annum, which will increase as gas prices rise.

Is there a way that i can work out what proportion of my gas bill is for hot water?

Where would he get the 30% figure from?

Does anyone have any experience of this company or similar?

Have you saved money by having a south facing solar panel installed?

I look forward to your input. Thank you in advance.

Cardew

There are loads and loads of threads of this.

If you have gas you will be very lucky to save £50 a year.

Many of these firms are based in Dorset.

Ring up Bournemouth trading Standards and ask them about the firm and if the Directors have any connection with other firm in the area - either operating or out of business.

Have you not seen the programmes on TV about solar energy salesmen?

Some of the reputable firms in this business make realistic claims that their system will produce 1,000kWh per year. The government sponsored a trial of 8 different systems(in the sunny South) and the average output was again 1,000kWh per year.

Now if you have gas that will save you between £25 and £30 a year; a larger system might double that to £50-£60 a year savings.

Bear in mind that most of that is produced in summer - in winter the savings can be 30 or 40kWh a month.

If you want to know how much you spend on Hot water, look at your gas meter today and again tomorrow(assuming you will have no heating on and do not cook by gas) The average spend is around £100 to £150 a year on Ho Water.

Ask Mr salesman to give you any written guarantee about output in kWh from his system. Not the dreaded phrase "up to" xxx kWh. He won't!!!

Was that quote of £6400 his opening price or did it reduce? perhaps for letting other prospective customers view your system?

£6,400 invested(or borrowed) at 7% will produce £448 a year in interest. So if you save £50 you the system will only cost you £398 a yaer for the privelege of owning. Even his crazy £330 a year savings claim will mean it is only costing you £118 to own.

Steer very clear!!!

moonrakerz

bettina66 wrote: »

Is there a way that i can work out what proportion of my gas bill is for hot water?

I turned my central heating off at the beginning of May, my gas consumption for hot water only since then has been just over 40p per day.

bettina66 wrote: »

Where would he get the 30% figure from?

Think of a number and double it - or triple it if you think you will get a sale out of it !


Steer well clear of these cowboys !

bettina66

Thank you for your input.

I have worked out that the gas we used in 24 hours cost us 48.5p. This was an very typical, average day without heating etc. We generally have a couple of power showers and a bath a day, we used the dishwasher and washing machine (althought not sure if they have cold feeds) and hand washing etc.

This means that if the solar panel supplier ALL our hot water requirement for 6 months a year (over exaggeration on both amount of water supplied and length of time supplied) it would save us £88.51.

So it was well worth doing the exercise!

Thanks for your help!

Cardew

bettina66 wrote: »

This means that if the solar panel supplier ALL our hot water requirement for 6 months a year (over exaggeration on both amount of water supplied and length of time supplied) it would save us £88.51.

So it was well worth doing the exercise!

As you say you won't save as much as £88

Just a thought, wht not ring your local trading standards office and report the conversation. Not a formal complaint but just let them know what this firm are saying to potential [STRIKE]victims[/STRIKE] customers.

The thing that makes me angry is they take money off the elderly with these lies.

bettina66

The plot has thickened in that someone else rang from their call scentre last night and said that the home that they were going to set up in our area has fallen through yesterday and they were all ready to send out new mailing to our post code today. If we agreed to take the system and pay a deposit , yesterday they could do it for £4950.

The other order had fallen through because they had the wrong sort of boiler - on questioning he said that it "Had no cold feed" - Blimey i thought, what sort of boiler has no cold feed.

I said to him that we might still be interested (which of course we weren't) if he could supply two or three people who had the system installed and we could talk to them about how much they have been saving.

By the way the original salesman said that he would let us have details of some people that we could talk to, the day after he came and was talking about coming to sign the paperwork the next day.

Two days later, we never heard from him.

The chap from the call centre last night said that if we placed the order and paid a £250 deposit it would stop his marketing manager sending out another mailing for this area tomorrow (actually today now) and then they could supply us with details of satisfied customers. But the agreement was a legally binding document and there was no saying whether their interpretation of a satisfied customer was the same as ours, but they ought to be able to give us arefund if we weren't happy with the recommendations.

I am genuinely interested in the technology and the concept of heating water by solar power, but I refuse to be sold to in such a high pressure way and with false figures.

If we weren't smart enough to work out our own usage and had taken his word for it (like many others might) we might have thought about going for it.

Their sales pitch obviously works or else they wouldn't do it!

I am thinking about emailing Watchdog with the details.

Enough of the rant!

Cardew

Seems pretty standard practice I am afraid.

One of the Watchdog type programmes on TV secretly filmed the same sort of tactics, and then confronted the salesman; who just walked out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/sep/01/moneysupplement.consumeraffairs

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=411879&in_page_id=1&ito=1565

The trouble is with all these firms, mainly based around Bournemouth, is that they go out of business and then another firm 'appears'.

I have been thinking of getting a firm here(I get loads of Flyers) with the sole intent of reporting them if they try similar tactics - It is deception pure and simple.

amtrakuk

just browsing Youtube on solar panels and photovoltaics. I see there are alot of hype about solar panels but if you notice all these videos are filed in arizona and other hot parts of the world as well as needing an area the size of a football pitch. I don't there is much gain in the UK.

One thing came across was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klooRS-Jjyo Perhapse this is the answer to our problems?

Cardew

The trouble is that fining these firms is simply a joke.

They make £thousands from each customer and, even if they pay the fines, it is just petty cash.

It is Simplee deception( I never could spell) The directors and employees who move from firm to firm should be jailed.

Paul_Varjak

Cardew: I did call Simplee Solar to my house just to wind them up! When they arrived they said they were Solar Direct.

Supposedly, the guy came to do a 'survey' but immediately launched into a sales pitch. I told him I wasn't gonna listen and that he should do his survey. This took around five minutes and then he launched into his sales pitch again.

I then showed him a few stories on the internet, including the court case and the ASA adjudication. He tried to bluff his way through it so I told him to leave.

Five minutes later I got a phone call from Simplee Solar/Solar Direct but did not answer it. Over the next hour I received about a dozen calls but did not bother to answer any of them - no doubt it was the boss who posted on this thread a year or two ago and I wasn't gonna listen to his Bullsh1t.

At the end of the hour I had BT set up CHOOSE TO REFUSE on my line (they did it for free for one month and then I cancelled it). I never got any more calls.

If you want to do the same I suggest you get a free VOIP phone number from SIPGATE and use that number just for Solar Direct. Discard the number when they have visited!!! You could also tape record their visit!