Discuss the free solar panel company: EvoEnergy

MSE_Jenny

This thread is specifically to discuss feedback for

EvoEnergy (Link)

If you've had solar panels installed by this company, we'd love to know how it went, so we can improve the guide. Things we'd like to know:

• Whereabouts are you?
• How smooth was the panel-fitting process?
• How much did you save on your electricity bill?
• How long did you have to wait for the panels?
• What are your tips to ensure you get the most out of the free panels?
• Were there any technical glitches?
• What should other MoneySavers watch out for when signing up?

CLICK REPLY TO FEEDBACK

To read about solar panels in general, see the main:
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Thank you for your help


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chickenboy

I was referred by a friend who is part of a group discount scheme (basically covers your VAT). They seem very organised (got most of my measurements from google maps), specced it all out, came round quickly to measure up. There was NO hard sell - all very professional and above board - and i can't find any bad press about them.

I will let you guys know how it looks a few weeks after the install...

Cardew

Firstly I have reservations about the savings(annual benefit) this firm give for all their case studies.

I have checked their claims on a number of their case studies and it would appear that they give IMO an unsupportable figure for 'in-house' savings on the electricity used in the house. The lowest savings figure I found was £152!!!

To give an example, take this case study.

Mr Jenkins, 3.96 kWp Ground Mounted System

Panel Model:Sharp NU 180Inverter Model:SMA SB 3300Monitoring System:N/ASystem Size:3.96 kWp

Annual Output:3,301 kWh/year

CO2 Reduction:1,746 kg/year

Annual Benefit:£1,627/year

For a system that generates 3301kWh a year, the income will be 3301 x 41.3p(FIT) = £ 1363.31.

Selling 50% of 3301kWh back to the grid @ 3p/kWh = £49.52

Total = £1412.83

However they claim it will save £1,627 so to reach this figure they have attributed £214.17 to savings off Mr Jenkins bill.

On another case study they themselves say £199 will be the reduction in his bill.

So two points on this.

Firstly how do the firm reach these figures? It is only possible to ascertain such savings if the firm fit an export meter and they make no mention of this in their case studies.

How do the firm reconcile savings of this magnitude when the Energy Saving Trust say a typical saving will be £70 per year i.e. a third of Mr Jenkins savings. Also there are case studies from people with export meters fitted that would confirm savings more in line with EST's figures.

The recent WHICH report commented on firms exaggerating the potential savings. Some firms apparently do this by giving outrageous over-estimates of generated power – someone posted that they were quoted an annual output of 2,500kWh from a 2.1kWp system!!!! It produced an excellent 1,830kWh.

EVO energy’s predicted generated output figures seem entirely realistic, however IMO they are exaggerating the savings to be achieved from savings on the bill.

Perhaps the firm could comment?

albyota

Come on Cardew, keep up.....the FIT rate since April 1st 2011 was increased by RPI 4.8% is 43.3p/kWh and the export bit is 3.1p/kWh

FIT 3301 @ 43.3 = £1,429.33
Export 1650 @ 3.1 = £51.16
therefore £1,480.49 leaving £147 for savings made on not having to import around 1400 kWh/yr @ 10.5p/kWh (Recent and future electricity price increase)

The governments own SAP calculator solar PV by Encraft 2005 v5 give these figures too.

Cardew

albyota wrote: »

Come on Cardew, keep up.....the FIT rate since April 1st 2011 was increased by RPI 4.8% is 43.3p/kWh and the export bit is 3.1p/kWh

FIT 3301 @ 43.3 = £1,429.33
Export 1650 @ 3.1 = £51.16
therefore £1,480.49 leaving £147 for savings made on not having to import around 1400 kWh/yr @ 10.5p/kWh (Recent and future electricity price increase)

The governments own SAP calculator solar PV by Encraft 2005 v5 give these figures too.

I suspect it is you that needs to keep up; or perhaps you should read their website;)

The pre-April 2011 rates of 41.3p/kWh and 3p/kWh for 50% are the figures used by EvoEnergy themselves in their calculations - don't forget these are historical case studies.

They achieve their 'in house' savings figure by assuming that the house will use 50% of the generated output and pricing each kWh at 13p.

They 'justify' that extraordinary high price of 13p/kWh by saying that is the EON price for daytime electricity for someone on an Economy 7 tariff!!!

Incidentally on the SAP calculator re the 50% used have you read this?

have been following the continual references to SAP software when relating to the potential imported electricity savings and I must say that the SAP figure is wrong, it was wrong when I had quotes for my system and the more informed installers agreed it was wrong, it's also known to be wrong by the BRE as evidenced by their own documentation .....
http://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/SAP...-2009_9-90.pdf

Quote : SAP 2009 version 9.90 (March 2010) - Appendix M1 (Page 82)

'Electricity exported is valued at the price for electricity sold to the grid. The

effective price depends on a factor, b, which

is in the range 0.0 to 1.0 and is defined as the proportion of the generated electricity that is used directly within the dwelling. The value of b depends on the coincidence of electricity generation and electricity demand within the dwelling. At present the value of b = 0.50 should be used for SAP calculations: this will be reviewed in future if relevant data becomes available.'

This method of calculation is based on too simplistic an assumption, being that 50% of generation is used in the property, whatever the size of array is installed and is therefore flawed, and is therefore wrong. The BRE obviously understand that it is wrong, effectively qualifying their position by saying that the 50% factor is not based on relevant data because none is available.

You presumably have seen that the EST have carried out trials and concluded that people use less than 50% electricity in the house and that £70 a year is a typical saving.

albyota

The problem with any of the figures given by EST, they are all averages.....if someone with a 1.4kWp system is likely to save £20 - £40 but someone with 3.9kWp could save £100 - £120 then the average will be £70, all MCS installers should only be using SAP 2005 v5 NOT the 2009. Also the SAP 2005 v5 uses 12.06p/kWh as its default.

albyota

I fear cardew is about to post a really long one......at this time of night......:eek:

Cardew

albyota wrote: »

The problem with any of the figures given by EST, they are all averages.....if someone with a 1.4kWp system is likely to save £20 - £40 but someone with 3.9kWp could save £100 - £120 then the average will be £70, all MCS installers should only be using SAP 2005 v5 NOT the 2009. Also the SAP 2005 v5 uses 12.06p/kWh as its default.

Of course like any computer program, rubbish in = rubbish out. The SAP is wrong in the 50% and 12.06p/kWh for a domestic tariff.

Yes I would readily concede that £100 saving is possible as of course is £20.

However there are two major points to consider on this. If someone uses 1,000kWh pa we tend to value it at 10p/kWh(still an average price for tier 2 electricity) and thus £100.

However to save that amount during the day it usually means some use of water heating by an immersion heater. That, if you have gas, means each kWh is valued at 3p/kWh.

Why would a 4kWp system save substantially more than a 2kWh system? If you are using say 6kWh during daylight hours and a 2kWp system generates 12kWh and a 4kWh generates 24kWh - both will satisfy your demand. There might be a marginal extra saving with the bigger system.

We have had a couple of posters who are PV enthusiasts and had their PV systems for years(before FIT) and have export meters.

One uses 1,000kWh pa in house and the other 500kWh pa - and he has a wife and young children at home all day. He states that he cannot see how he would use more.

Go on-line and there are case studies of people who know their in house consumption, and they are in line with the above.

The bottom line is their claims of £200+ savings are unsupportable.

chickenboy

franky its only the FIT numbers that are important - the discount off your bill and exporting fee are peanuts compared to the 43p/unit revenue

EvoEnergy_company_representative

Cardew wrote: »

Firstly I have reservations about the savings(annual benefit) this firm give for all their case studies.

I have checked their claims on a number of their case studies and it would appear that they give IMO an unsupportable figure for 'in-house' savings on the electricity used in the house. The lowest savings figure I found was £152!!!

To give an example, take this case study.



For a system that generates 3301kWh a year, the income will be 3301 x 41.3p(FIT) = £ 1363.31.

Selling 50% of 3301kWh back to the grid @ 3p/kWh = £49.52

Total = £1412.83

However they claim it will save £1,627 so to reach this figure they have attributed £214.17 to savings off Mr Jenkins bill.

On another case study they themselves say £199 will be the reduction in his bill.

So two points on this.

Firstly how do the firm reach these figures? It is only possible to ascertain such savings if the firm fit an export meter and they make no mention of this in their case studies.

How do the firm reconcile savings of this magnitude when the Energy Saving Trust say a typical saving will be £70 per year i.e. a third of Mr Jenkins savings. Also there are case studies from people with export meters fitted that would confirm savings more in line with EST's figures.

The recent WHICH report commented on firms exaggerating the potential savings. Some firms apparently do this by giving outrageous over-estimates of generated power – someone posted that they were quoted an annual output of 2,500kWh from a 2.1kWp system!!!! It produced an excellent 1,830kWh.

EVO energy’s predicted generated output figures seem entirely realistic, however IMO they are exaggerating the savings to be achieved from savings on the bill.

Perhaps the firm could comment?

Hi Cardew,

Thanks for your post and for having a look through our website, I hope it was informative.

We reach the figures you have mentioned in your original post in the same fashion you yourself worked them out. We use SAP to calculate these figures (in this quote, we had used SAP 2005) which taking into account the pitch, orientation, kWp, shading factor and UK constant gave us the figure of 3301kWh p.a. from a 3.96 kWp system.

We use the methodology set out by the government in the SAP calculations and through the accepted methods for calculating customer’s returns. We accept that the SAP calculations are not perfect for estimating outputs (notably the inability to differentiate between geographical locations, and the wide bands given to the shading factors) and that the estimates for savings may not be accurate for everyone.

In this particular instance you are right in that being pre April 2011 the savings were calculated at a rate of 41.3p/kWh for the energy generated and the export tariff was calculated at a rate of 3p/kWh for 50% of the energy generated that Mr Jenkins’ supplier assumed he exported back to the grid.

This gives us £1363.31 for the generation payment and £49.52 for the export payment.

The savings are based on information supplied by The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) who release annual tables of domestic electricity bill costs, which tallies with EON’s daytime Economy 7 tariff costs.

In 2009 DECC announced regional electricity bills were at an average unit cost of 13.27p/kWh which we rounded down to 13p/kWh. It must be remembered these are national averages and that savvy consumers such as the majority of the people signed up to Money Saving Expert will be paying less than this, either through using direct debit payments or through researching and choosing the best tariff for themselves. However this was the data used for our calculations when we calculated Mr Jenkins savings of £214.57, based on using 50% of the energy he generated and the associated savings on his bills.

This past year (2010) average electricity costs were 12.9p/kWh, in which case the savings would have been £212.91 using the same methodology.

Once again thank you for taking an interest in EvoEnergy and our case studies, and we look forward to hearing from all of you should you want a quote for your properties.


Kind regards,

Charlotte
EvoEnergy

Cardew

Charlotte,

The figure of 3,301kWh pa from a 3.96kWp system is not in dispute, so I wonder why you felt the need to explain how it was derived.

EVOenergy’s predicted generated output figures seem entirely realistic

I am fully aware of how you reach your figures of in house saving. However you know, as does anyone else that understands Solar PV, that to calculate 'in house' savings based on the assumption that each of your clients are using 50% of their generated electricity is just a nonsense. As indeed shown by the recent Energy Saving Trust(EST) report and the quote about the BRE in my other post.

You are aware(or should be) that your explanation on Domestic electricity pricing is also a nonsense. This is a quote from the DECC reports

All bills are calculated assuming an annual consumption of 3,300 kWh. The average bill is equivalent to the total revenue divided by the total number of customers. Bills and unit costs reflect the prices of all suppliers and include standing charges.(my bold)

Taking a subset of tariffs which are available to all customers within a region and have been
open throughout the year with at least 200 customers - broadly speaking this excludes all fixed tariffs running from

previous years, social and short-term internet tariffs

Anyone saving on their electricity bill with PV will not save anything from their standing charges - be it a daily standing charge or high priced Tier1 or primary units; and the effect of standing charges on someone using 3,300kWh pa is considerable.

I doubt if many people were paying more than 10p/kWh last year when you exclude standing charges - the savvy MSE types considerably less.

So by using a figure of 13p/kWh you can 'inflate' your savings figures by at least 30%.

The EST have come up with a figure of annual savings of £70 pa for a typical household.

Your figures of in excess of £200 are not supportable in the real world.

However the uninformed - particularly those potential customers of your 'rent a roof' scheme - will probably not have the knowledge to dispute your figures.