Current PV panel prices

N9eav

BornAtTheRightTime wrote: »

I have just paid my 25% deposit with Tesco this morning for a 4kW system £11,599 plus £100 to install the inverter in the garage. So far I have been impressed. The 3rd party contractor was the most knowledgeable representative of the 5 companies I had in to quote and Tesco's customer service team have have called when they said they would, answered my queries and and gone so far as to help educate my local planning office (Maldon - who initially wanted us to apply for planning permission to test whether solar panels came under Permitted Development in our area... and no, it's not a conservation area or listed building).

23k Clubcard points used on triple rewards is nearly another £1000 saved on ferries and channel tunnel crossings too.

I got the Tesco salesman coming next week for a measure and quote to see if I can get 3.9kw on the roof. Price was £11600 over the phone.
23000 club card points would be a bonus

John_Pierpoint

Gizmosmum wrote: »

Most decent firms can you give you an informal estimate over the phone once they have asked a few critical questions. If they badger you to send someone round then they are more than likely to be sales people with inflated prices.

I'd suggest the following if you're able:

Measure the width of the roof you want your solar on.
Measure the roof from the ridge to the gutter. If you can't do this get into the loft measure the floor to the peak and half of the width of the building and then Google right angle calculator and work out both the angle and pitch of the roof.
Use a compass or Google Earth to see what your orientation is
Check to see if there's any shading that might fall on the panels.

Once you've got that information look up your local installers through the MCS site and ring them for prices. They will have enough information there to give you a ball park figure.

From there you can guage things like response times, attitude, panel options, warranties without having any pressure from a sales person.

Narrow it down to a couple of installers with the right price and panel configuration for you, invite them round and chose from them.

Hope that helps.

Any one care to comment on how the "representative" is remunerated in most cases?

What abilities/qualifications should one expect from a "representative" ?

My guess it that it might well be commission only, perhaps with a guarantee of minimum wage [because of the problems of being self employed with only one customer makes you an employee - a bit like a migrant worker harvesting vegetables?]

I think I would be impressed by a knowledge of electricity regulations and a desire to put on a boiler suit and crawl into my loft.

Would the marginal costs of sending a good thorough representative be in the order of 150 quid [I do remember the woman who came to do the energy certificate on a house I was selling, confessing she was self employed (formerly redundant Estate Agent who had retrained) and she had been beaten down to £45 quid per house;which given the effort of churning out the document and dashing about in a reasonably smart car, was starvation wages inside the M25. - Just for the record the only bit, that was self evidently wrong was the loft insulation - 1/3rd of the property had none and the rest was only 1 inch - I don't think the 45 quid covered crawling about in a 150 year old loft].

N9eav wrote: »

I got the Tesco salesman coming next week for a measure and quote to see if I can get 3.9kw on the roof. Price was £11600 over the phone.
23000 club card points would be a bonus

On a similar thread some where, there is a discussion about the Tesco method of selling.
[Tesco has lots of experience with employing suppliers/contractors called farmers - "We are having a special promotion and you are paying by cutting your price to us !!! Don't worry the amount of extra sales will more than make up for your reduced margins. Lots of love, Mr Tesco"]

This is a bit like drumming up business by offering cheap MOT's at a garage.

You might find that the supplier has an incentive to charge for "extras" where he gets to keep the extra money and can control the margins:
Extra electrical work needed to meet modern wiring regulations.
Extra costs related to difficulties with your particular scaffolding.
[You get the idea....]

Read the small print.

Let us know who will be doing the installation and if there are any extras on the quotation compared with your current estimate.

Gizmosmum_2

Reps paid around £500 commission I seem to remember, all self employed. Some better trained than others but the training is usually related to sales with a bit of solar. One of my clients uses sales reps, not my cup of tea, but they do spend 3 days looking at solar systems and learning how to do basic design - enough to sell.

Sales are followed up with a technical survey once the job has been confirmed. They don't add loads of extras onto their own clients but you're right about the Tesco approach - they provide the absolute basic of service for the price and the installer adds extras on as required. Our clients are quite fair but the customer sometimes sees it as a way of squeezing loads of extra out of the customer. In reality they are only making £200 on the installation, not a lot to keep your tools in good condition, run vans, maintain the paperwork and memberships of relevant organisations to keep MCS certification.

John_Pierpoint

£500 just for getting a signature and then someone else has to do the technical stuff?

Sounds like money for old rope to me. Perhaps they do PV on Monday, Heat Pumps on Tuesday and second hand cars for the rest of the week? Thus demonstrating multiple source of income for the tax man.

Gizmosmum_2

John_Pierpoint wrote: »

£500 just for getting a signature and then someone else has to do the technical stuff?.

It's hard work putting pressure on old ladies :rotfl:

sparkles69_2

Hi,

I've just had the salesman from SDS in for an hour - did not go to the loft and did not accurately measure the pitch of the roof or direction.

For 14 x Sharp NU245 with Diehl AKO 3800S inverter (including the extra scaffold of £499 for 3 storey house) he quoted £18984.74 for the 3.43kwp array.

He then offered various deals including removing vat, fitting costs and £499 managers discretion and came down to £15898.

Has anyone had any dealings with this company. I suspect this is still well over-priced. They also wanted a 25% deposit now, with another 25% at survey - I guess they may find some problems at that point and up the price????

Freepost

sparkles69 wrote: »

He then offered various deals including removing vat, fitting costs and £499 managers discretion and came down to £15898.

Has anyone had any dealings with this company. I suspect this is still well over-priced.

Seems very expensive ...... walk away!

FYI. A few weeks back, I had Tescos come and give me a quote, £12,250 for 16 x Sharp 250 NU250 with the same inverter and extra scaffolding.

I'd suggest contacting Tescos and get a quote over the telephone then use that as the basis for negotiation with other firms.

F

jennyjelly

Is it worth borrowing money to cash in on the FIT bonanza? Or is it something you should only do if the cash is sitting in an account getting very little interest?

jetski690

jennyjelly wrote: »

Is it worth borrowing money to cash in on the FIT bonanza? Or is it something you should only do if the cash is sitting in an account getting very little interest?

That's a very good question jennyjelly, the way I see it is if you are going to yield an income of 9-10% per year from the fit and your loan is under that which it should be the income from the fit should cover the outlay of the loan and when payed off in year 10 or there abouts everything after is pure profit, dont see it that your getting something for nothing because at the end of the day the intial outlay has to be repaid someway or another, I wouldn't put myself so much in dept though that your going to struggle but I dare say many others will see things in a different light.

thenudeone

jennyjelly wrote: »

Is it worth borrowing money to cash in on the FIT bonanza? Or is it something you should only do if the cash is sitting in an account getting very little interest?

If you have a cheap mortgage with some spare equity and they will allow you to borrow extra at the same cheap rate, (or you have overpaid it and you can withdraw the overpayment) then - yes, it could be a good option.

Otherwise, you may pay nearly as much (or more) in interest as you receive in FIT + export tariff and electricity savings.

Remember they are not no-maintenance. Sooner or later something will go wrong and it will cost something to repair or replace.

It's complicated because the FIT is index-linked, and the electricity savings (although small) depend on the price of electricity at the time.