Free solar power system. Is it a scam?

mysterons

'Most people' wont have 7 kids between 8 and 29 years old all living at home . Also to go along with my older daughters there's 1 son in law and 1 grandson and 2 live-in boyfriends hanging around here. That's what 13 people using the power? Then I work from home so the place is never unoccupied so there's no lull in consumption during the day. Oh and btw our eldest son is disabled so he's here all the time too.
The house is huge and is always busy. There's plenty of room for everybody and they're all welcome to stay as long as it suits them. I'd say we use enough power for 4 normal households so anything I can do to reduce the cost (apart from chucking out my family) I will investigate.

Cardew

Noncom,
Great minds etc!

Actually your terminology could confuse. You state "the biggest part of the Feed In Tariff" and "the bulk of the FIT payment" but of course it is all of the FIT payment

noncom_2

Ha! Well, yeah, I know technically you're right, but I think most people will see the Export Tariff as a part of the FIT system rather than something entirely separate.

I was trying to clarify rather than obfuscate, honest!

noncom_2

mysterons wrote: »

'Most people' wont have 7 kids between 8 and 29 years old all living at home . Also to go along with my older daughters there's 1 son in law and 1 grandson and 2 live-in boyfriends hanging around here. That's what 13 people using the power? Then I work from home so the place is never unoccupied so there's no lull in consumption during the day. Oh and btw our eldest son is disabled so he's here all the time too.
The house is huge and is always busy. There's plenty of room for everybody and they're all welcome to stay as long as it suits them. I'd say we use enough power for 4 normal households so anything I can do to reduce the cost (apart from chucking out my family) I will investigate.

Wow! If that were me, I'd ditch the solar panels and build an enormous wind turbine in the garden.

And then go and live in it.........

joolsleeds

Have had the chap come round to sort out the lease document - no pressure at all, no hassle.

In fact ASG emailed me a copy of the lease to review prior to the chap coming anyway.......again very transparent!

Next step is tomorrow, where the isolator switch and scaffolding gets installed, then panels installed on Thursday.

There was conversation earlier in this thread about a meter you can get to monitor the energy provided etc.....anyone got any details? I will then ask the (hopefully) friendly sparky to fit it on Thursday.

Will update then.

noncom_2

I don't know if it's the one mentioned earlier or not, but there is a cute little device called the Wattson which is a "designer" energy monitor, but offers good capability including storage of 28 days energy usage which can then be downloaded to a PC via USB (and there's software to help you make sense of it). It also features a microgeneration sensor input, so you can measure your energy generation (which your generation meter will also do, but not necessarily let you transfer to a computer), and if wired into the system in a certain way, can also let you calculate your export figure.

Google "Wattson" and then there's a pdf for the Installation guide, with a section called something like "Ideal Installation for Micro-Generation". Show that to your installer and ask them to wire it in that way (it involves nothing more than the addition of a junction box, so they should be happy to do so).

Hope this helps

joolsleeds

Tomorrow is the panel installation day.

Today, an electrician came and installed an isolator switch next to the electricity meter.

Then a site supervisor came to do a pre install inspection - to be honest wasn't here long, just checked the cabling, and answered any questions I had.

Finally, the scaffolders came, did their thing and left.

As seems usual with ASG, all the people I met today were very friendly and polite and were happy to answer any questions I had.

So tomorrow is I-day!

Will let you know how it goes.

saffysue

Has anybody living in a semi managed to qualify ?

Cardew

saffysue wrote: »

Has anybody living in a semi managed to qualify ?

The 2 crucial elements will be the size of your roof and is it South facing/not shaded. - (there will be other factors as well)

They have a standard package and it is pretty big.

SarahLucyD

Saffysue - yes we've done and are doing lots of semis - in particular a whole row of them in one area of Sheffield. We've also fitted onto terraced properties. We are putting some photos up onto our website very shortly. Cardew is entirely right, we do have a standard package, we don't do custom installs and so it depends on the available roofspace and the orientation and, of course, shading is a 'no-no'. Some semis & terraced properties have deceptively large roofs.

Sarah Dyson - A Shade Greener