Free solar panel discussion

HomeSun_company_representative

slacky555 wrote: »

I am currently in talks with homesun and i have been told that the solarshare £500 fee has been dropped and that just the £5 a month fee applies to which i am not happy about so this is being looked into at the moment. I have this in a final lease from you, so why are you now saying that the £100 will be used towards the £500.

Also why should you charge the £500 and £5 a month when british gas are offering a similar size system for free???

also now you have stated the size of your panels then i find something strange about you/eage only offering me the solarshare option 2.6kw at 14 panels rather that the free system at 16 panels.

if you are all ok to fit 14 panels then this must be in two rows of 7 which by your sizes means 7m across my roof and 3.2m up.

i know for a fact that at the front of the house where the panels will be fitted my bedroom is just over 17ft long and the third bedroom is at least 7ft not including any walls so i make that at least 24ft if you include just 1ft for interanl and external walls then i could fit one more panel in across so 8m and 3.2m up.

i have heard of a lot of people being offered the solarshare option is this so you make additional money from the £500 fee and £5 a month fee.


Really not happy about your information!!

Dear slacky555,

First of all please accept my apologies that you are not happy with the information provided.

If indeed the £500 has been dropped for you, then please be assured that your £100 deposit will be returned to you. If you decided to go ahead then this will be returned after the installation.

Unfortunately I am not very technical therefore if you could email me your address details to [EMAIL="customerservices@homesun.com"]customerservices@homesun.com[/EMAIL] then I will be more than happy to pass your query on to your Solar Specialist. Alternately you may contact your Solar Specialist directly who will be more than happy to answer your queries.

With all due respect the surveyors from EAGA are fully trained and qualified for this type of work as they do this on a daily basis as such we can but only make our decisions based on their survey results. British Gas maybe offering smaller systems at no cost however HomeSun operate on a completely different business model. E.g. If ASDA are offering "buy 1 get 1 free" on a product, this not does not imply Sainsbury's will offer the same product with the same offer at the same time.

Krish Patel - HomeSun Ltd.

slacky555

HomeSun_Customer_Team wrote: »

Dear slacky555,

First of all please accept my apologies that you are not happy with the information provided.

If indeed the £500 has been dropped for you, then please be assured that your £100 deposit will be returned to you. If you decided to go ahead then this will be returned after the installation.

Unfortunately I am not very technical therefore if you could email me your address details to [EMAIL="customerservices@homesun.com"]customerservices@homesun.com[/EMAIL] then I will be more than happy to pass your query on to your Solar Specialist. Alternately you may contact your Solar Specialist directly who will be more than happy to answer your queries.

With all due respect the surveyors from EAGA are fully trained and qualified for this type of work as they do this on a daily basis as such we can but only make our decisions based on their survey results. British Gas maybe offering smaller systems at no cost however HomeSun operate on a completely different business model. E.g. If ASDA are offering "buy 1 get 1 free" on a product, this not does not imply Sainsbury's will offer the same product with the same offer at the same time.

Krish Patel - HomeSun Ltd.

Thanks for the reply, why are you only offering some customers like myself the no £500 fee for solar share?? And is the £5 a month fee for everyone as well? Or are some customers not being charged this?

HalloweenJack

the users with solar pv are reporting `on average` the installation is saving them between £100 to £120 a year , great in the summer , not so great in the winter - paying £5 a mont means at best you are only saving £5 a month in electric bills , and ofc the FIT payments are massive in the summer.

ilovegreen_2

HomeSun_Customer_Team wrote: »

A couple of things on HomeSun have popped up in this thread, which we would like to clarify.

How we work in a nutshell
For the vast majority of our customers, we install a solar PV system at our own expense on our customers’ roofs at little or no cost to customers. They benefit from free electricity and we take the feed-in-tariff paid by utilities for the electricity generated. This means that we can only afford to install on those roofs that are optimum in terms of orientation, shading and location in the country. The following is a breakdown of the guidelines that we work to when deciding whether a property is suitable for our Free Solar and Solar Share schemes.

Firstly a desktop review is carried out, certain criteria are used to ascertain whether a roof is suitable or not. These criteria are put in place to ensure that any PV system which we install will reach its highest potential in generating substantial amounts of energy. If a roof meets all of these, the applicant will be notified and later visited by one of our solar specialists in their local area.

The roof must be a minimum of 20m2. This is the size of our smallest Photo Voltaic system. It comprises of 12 panels each measuring 1x1.6m. The ideal situation is that all the PV panels be installed together rather than scattered, this is how they are most productive. Any obstructions to the roof space available, such as windows, could reduce and restrict the area available for PV panels. Additionally, these windows can cause shading.

There should be no shading on the roof from any object at any point in the day, so that the panels receive the maximum amount of light. Even as small an amount of shade as 3% on any panel in the setup can reduce the efficiency of the whole system by a significant 25%.

The orientation of the roof needs to be pitched (ideally at 40°) facing South or South East / South West within 60°. Due to the UK’s geographical position in relation to the equator a South facing roof will be in the sun’s path throughout the whole day.

In many cases we receive applications where the roof will not meet one or more of these specifications. On average 20-30% of all roofs that we screen will be eligible for our Free Solar or Solar Share product.

EAGA & HomeSun
It seems though a lot of the members on this forum have just realised that our installation partners are EAGA. You can find a press release on this at Eaga’s website for more information.

£100 Deposit – Explanation and Good News!
There also seems to be a lot of confusion about the £100 deposit therefore we would like to clarify that point. Firstly the deposits (£100) which our customers pay at the initial meet with the HomeSun Solar Specialist is a refundable deposit and to secure a survey date. The HomeSun Solar Specialist then arranges a Technical Survey with Eaga. Once the survey is completed by Eaga no matter what the results are your £100 deposit is refunded (For SolarShare the £100 is used towards the £500 leaving a balance of £400 for the customer)

Good News
Our customers told us what they wanted and we listened. We are not asking for the £100 deposit anymore therefore customers are not asked for this initial payment.

Krish Patel - HomeSun Ltd.

Krish, Even though you have a website, some us are just keen to see what others have to say about a product or service and ultimately the results before many of us will commit to anything (That's just the way we are I'm afraid) therefore Its good to see you as a rep from homesun dealing and supplying with information to us who are interested in your products and services. Keep up the good work. :-)

I've always received a glowing service from you by the way.

:xmassign: to you and the rest of your team.

stphnstevey

JenR8 wrote: »

Your Fit is gaurenteed for 25 years. The reduced rate would be for new installations, either after 2012, or from a date before that if an unspecified number of systems have been installed.

Looking into this further, thats right.

However it depends on how much you trust a goverment gaurantee? 25yrs is a long time and vast sways of goverment policy has come and gone in just a year, let alone 25.

HIPS for example have come and gone in just a few years, with hundreds of people taking training that is now defunct.

However, a system paid for yourself would generally pay for itself in about 10yrs, so anything after that is a bonus (reduced or not).

Renting your roof for about £200 year seems less appealling. Particularly as the need for roof repairs in 25yrs are pretty much a given, more than the two times they allow you to remove them.

£200/yr for the hassle, not sure worth it, but each to there own.

pauldreed

pauldreed wrote: »

Has anyone used a energy monitor to see how many watts is being USED by the solar circuit during the night? (ie when no solar energy is being generated).
My ASG system indicates 140W, which seems excessive, as I thought that the invertors went into 'sleep' mode when there is no solar generation??
I have tried 2 different energy monitors, and both readings are similar.

The Effekta invertor manual specs that the 'sleep' mode consumption is just 0.15W which I would expect.

Has anyone else noticed this, or have I got a fault?

I emailed ASG earlier today re this, and got both a email reply and a personal phone call within the hour
The explanation is quite complex, and is explained here http://www.theiet.org/forums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=205&threadid=38469&enterthread=y but basically it's a limitation of the energy monitor technology, and the total power used should be just slightly more than 3W per hour during the night which I don't have a problem with.
Problem Solved!

zeupater

HomeSun_Customer_Team wrote: »

A couple of things on HomeSun have popped up in this thread, which we would like to clarify......

..... Krish Patel - HomeSun Ltd.

Hi Krish

As it's been raised a couple of times, could you also clarify the basis of the buy-out option if that was an eventual requirement ..... I believe that it's been stated that the fee is based on a straight-line depreciating value, but perhaps you could provide example buyout figures for a typical system for various years (1,5,10,20 ?)

Regards

slacky555

zeupater wrote: »

Hi Krish

As it's been raised a couple of times, could you also clarify the basis of the buy-out option if that was an eventual requirement ..... I believe that it's been stated that the fee is based on a straight-line depreciating value, but perhaps you could provide example buyout figures for a typical system for various years (1,5,10,20 ?)

Regards

The formula that I was given is

Y= number of months in to the 25 years
V= cost price o the system in my case £10,600

(303-Y) / 303 x V = buy out price

So if I wanted to buy out in year 5 or 60 months
303-60 / 303= 0.8019802 x £10600 = £8,500.99

daytona600_2

if you have the money
buy a 3-4kwp system yourself
then keep the £20-35k it produces yourself
and no more bills for 25 years
why should a big company get all the profits
they probably borrowed the money in the first place from you anyway via a bailed out bank

£ 7-8k low/mid £ 9-10k top end german/japanese
+ installation £3-4k for a 3/4kwp

cathbath76 wrote: »

Just joining the discussion to say we have approached three companies for free panels - Isis, Homesun and British Gas. We have a large due-south facing roof which should be ideal for solar panels

We haven't progressed with Isis because they posted us their lease for us to sign before they have even visited us - not really happy to do that...

We have had a rep from Homesun round recently (after waiting months for an appointment). She measured up and said we should be suitable for the largest (free) system, but it depends on the pitch of our roof, and we need to have a survey from Eaga. She did mention a £100 refundable fee, but said they are waiving that at the moment, so we didn't have to pay anything. We are now awaiting a visit from Eaga in January.

Today I've had a rep from British Gas round who surveyed the property, went in the loft to check the roof pitch, and was able to tell me straight away that our roof is suitable for their largest, 3.15kW system. He said they don't use any subcontractors and do all the installations and maintenance themselves.

I have been impressed by how quickly British Gas has progressed things, but in terms of what both companies are offering, the British Gas system is only 3.15kW whereas Homesun's is 3.5kW (I think). If we bought the panels ourselves we'd probably get a more powerful system such as 3.9kW (Tesco)... so it's a shame the companies offering free panels are not offering the most powerful ones.

Also, Homesun as they let you buy out of the contract at any time, with a straight line of depreciation. British Gas let you buy back the panels after 5 years, but the rep couldn't produce the buy-back figures (he said he'll email them to me).

I'm not sure who we'll end up going with. It sounds like the paperwork will take a couple of months to sort out anyway so we shall see...

daytona600_2

140watts sounds very high
unless cheap inverter is fitted
inverter should be basically be in sleep mode at night

u

Doc_N wrote: »

I'd be amazed if your system were using anything approaching 140W when it's not in use. The 0.15W sounds about right.

Are you sure it isn't other things (fridges, freezers, for example)? Not sure about your system, but on mine you could check by using the isolator switches to cut the power to the inverter/panels.