Official MSE Free Solar Panel guide discussion

Cardew

zeupater wrote: »

Hi

the previous owner, or the RaR company ? ..... I'd ring the solicitor and ask, you might just find that a deal would be in the making with the RaR provider ....
....

HTH
Z

Pinkrobin,


Agree with the above post. Just a note that RaR means 'Rent a Roof' company - i.e. Home Sun in your case

Pinkrobin

Thank you all for your helpful comments. It is my understanding that it was the Local Council who allowed / or perhaps didn't object when they should have as the property is in Devon and in (whatever the correct term is) in an area of beauty- as a result the panels were fitted but that the deceased owner was the one who originally signed the contract - she was door stepped by the company and signed up without her family knowing. Either way it seems the council are now pushing the planning app through so they might just be in for Christmas?! As long as the mortgage company agrees to lend on the property. Phew what a palaver! Thanks again.

zeupater

Pinkrobin wrote: »

Thank you all for your helpful comments .....

Hi

I would really love to see a response from someone within the RaR sector on this one. There must/should be some form of guideline on this which should have been followed and not doing so has caused problems regarding the sale of a property which we have so many times been told will/should/can not happen.

Considering that a number of RaR scheme operators, including the largest ( A Shade Greener ) and the operator of the scheme in question ( HomeSun ) both have regular representation on this thread I can't really see any reason why there wouldn't/couldn't be an explanation as to how and why this could happen ... (apart from keeping their heads down in the hope that nobody notices .. ) ....

So, here's the challenge to the industry representatives on these boards - provide some form of proof that the industry is a reputable and worthy one by explaining (on this thread) .... what went wrong?, what has been (/should be) done to stop it ever happening again? and considering the obvious issues caused - what should the fair and proper industry solution be in this case? ...

HTH
Z

jugglemummy

Has anyone had experience of making a claim and if so how to go about it?

We had panels installed in the summer and the savings/income generated do not meet anywhere near the figures quoted by the sales man and if we had not arranged our own payment could have left us with a finance agreement with which we were unable to meet the monthly repayments.

Two key phrases that the sales man used was 'this is based on daylight not sun light', 'these figures are based on a four hour day and there are always more than four hours in a day' implying that on a short winters day you would still generate 4000kwh per year (eg 10.95kwh per day). This is not the case as at the moment they are generating less than 3kwh per day and in the height of summer when there was easily 12 hours of sunlight let alone daylight the most we generated was 21kwh in a day. Again no consideration was given to the reduction in efficiency for a non southfacing roof or the pitch of the roof. Lastly, it was assumed a energy bill saving of 40% in actual fact you can only save on the electricity that you generate yourself which is estimated to be around 25% of that generated and probably only about 20% of your energy bill.
There is a company, Resolved Claims Limited, who are offering to make a claim on your behalf charging 25%+VAT of amount reclaimed but prefer that the deposit &/or installation was paid by credit card or finance arranged by the installation company. (we actually ended up with a finance agreement but were able to pay of within 30days with our own money)

jugglemummy

Froggitt wrote: »

And £117 of electricity a month plus solar panels, it sounds like you are running one of those cannabis farms.

That, I believe, is the monthly repayment on the finance agreement! So not 'free' at all.

jugglemummy

Chummy wrote: »

I read somewhere that an energy company got very upset when told by a customer that his meter was going backwards on a sunny day, and penalised him I seem to remember. They obviously know who is generating solar power, and my old meter is reading way lower than at the start of the quarter. Should I be worried?

My gas meter started giving a 'false' reading & I notified the energy company and they installed a new meter. Probably coincidence but noticed after installation of solar panels an an 'iboost'

jugglemummy

Former_MSE_Marcel wrote: »

Hi all, I wrote the guide on the MSE site on solar panels. Has anyone here had, or know of, any experiences where solar panels have been mis-sold? It was a problem back in 2012, but I'm trying to establish if it has reared its head again.

Would be great to hear of any cases, no matter how small or which supplier.

Thanks!

Have you had any replies? I've just posted in the forum as I think I have a case of being miss sold and would like to know how to go about making a claim.

System

jugglemummy wrote: »

Has anyone had experience of making a claim and if so how to go about it?

We had panels installed in the summer and the savings/income generated do not meet anywhere near the figures quoted by the sales man and if we had not arranged our own payment could have left us with a finance agreement with which we were unable to meet the monthly repayments.

Two key phrases that the sales man used was 'this is based on daylight not sun light', 'these figures are based on a four hour day and there are always more than four hours in a day' implying that on a short winters day you would still generate 4000kwh per year (eg 10.95kwh per day). This is not the case as at the moment they are generating less than 3kwh per day and in the height of summer when there was easily 12 hours of sunlight let alone daylight the most we generated was 21kwh in a day. Again no consideration was given to the reduction in efficiency for a non southfacing roof or the pitch of the roof. Lastly, it was assumed a energy bill saving of 40% in actual fact you can only save on the electricity that you generate yourself which is estimated to be around 25% of that generated and probably only about 20% of your energy bill.
There is a company, Resolved Claims Limited, who are offering to make a claim on your behalf charging 25%+VAT of amount reclaimed but prefer that the deposit &/or installation was paid by credit card or finance arranged by the installation company. (we actually ended up with a finance agreement but were able to pay of within 30days with our own money)

With the greatest respect, reading your post suggests to me that you have not really understood how PV solar works. A 4kWp installation will generate approximately 3600kWhs of electricity in a year depending on location, orientation and shadowing. Even when there is no sun, then on a bright day there will be some generation as some PV will permeate the cloud cover. Conversely, I have had days recently when the cloud cover has been so thick I could record my day's output in watts not kWs. The bulk of the energy generated will be during the months of May through to September when the sun is at its most powerful; hence, the 21kWhs you have seen in the Summer. There is no way that you will get 10.95kWhs every day just because you have 4 hours of daylight. If you add all the daily outputs together the figure you get should come somewhere near the total projected generation figure of 4000kWhs.

Similarly, the amount of generated energy used in the home is very much down to the homeowner. The average is about 25 to 50%.

IMHO, the only way that you will be able to prove mis-selling is if the seller has failed to comply with the code which requires a written projection of the energy that the installation will generate, any projected income and savings. Check the figures in the contract which you and the installer have signed. A case based on 'who said what to whom' is likely to fail. There is a complaints procedure laid down by the RECC.

http://www.recc.org.uk/scheme/consumer-code

captainhindsight_2

jugglemummy wrote: »

Have you had any replies? I've just posted in the forum as I think I have a case of being miss sold and would like to know how to go about making a claim.

Complaints about renewables should be made to the renewable energy consumer code (recc) or you can complain the mcs but eu will just pass this on to recc.

jugglemummy

You're correct in what you say and I am NOW aware that a 4kWp installation will generate approximately 3600kWhs and that the system is designed to generate that per year. But as I said the salesman kept repeating and got us to repeat back that it was based on 4 hours of daylight per day. So by my mathematical thinking and his implication meant that when there was more than 4 hours of daylight 'which there always is' it would generate much more than the figures quoted which quoted for 100% efficiency which our panels are not. Even looking at the contract AND reducing the figures for efficiency to 80% the calculation means that in FIT & export tarriff alone we should generate £134 per quarter. When the only amount we have so far received was at the end of October & covered the generation between 13/8 & 30/10 was £128 I strongly suspect that the next payment due at the end of January will not be anywhere near that amount!!!! I am yet to ascertain the energy saving figures as I was overpaying my monthly energy direct debit which was reduced from £120pm to £84pm at the time of installation and £286 refunded only to be increased to £120pm two months later & now they want to increase it to £145pm!!!!????? So as for miss selling the figures themselves are more than a little out.

Thanks for the RECC info, I have looked at the code of conduct but was hoping for anyone's experiences in actually making a claim. Additionally they put through Barclays finance even when we told them that we had raised the capital to pay for the panels outright. In actual fact this may in the long run do us a favour as i'm sure their sales methods are not FSA compliant and Barclays might want to be made aware of their selling tactics!