Just been quoted for a Solar Panels system - does this sound ok/right

EricMears

samtoby wrote: »

Is that a bad thing?

Not necessarily 'bad' - most of us will find our panels came from China ! However, your announcement "Just Canadian panels instead of German" did rather imply that you thought you were getting a product made in Canada.

There are of course a number of Chinese panel manufacturers - some better than others.

Martyn1981

samtoby wrote: »

Is that a bad thing?

In the first half of 2013, Canadian Solar was the fifth largest PV producer in the world. Click on the blue table in this recent article:

http://www.pv-tech.org/news/ihs_china_chimes_as_us_solar_companies_lag_market_growth_leaders

Quite what you should draw from that, I'm not sure. But probably more reassuring than them being the fifth smallest.

Mart.

EricMears

Martyn1981 wrote: »

In the first half of 2013, Canadian Solar was the fifth largest PV producer in the world.

Quite what you should draw from that, I'm not sure. But probably more reassuring than them being the fifth smallest.

Only 'reassuring' if you take the view that Nissan is probably one of the larger UK car producers so their products must be of higher quality than (say) Aston Martin

zeupater

EricMears wrote: »

Only 'reassuring' if you take the view that Nissan is probably one of the larger UK car producers so their products must be of higher quality than (say) Aston Martin

Hi Eric

Not quite comparing apples with apples, although I know where you're coming from :cool: ... the two manufacturers mentioned have differing product offerings based on specification & aspiration and effectively operate in different market sectors, one huge and the other limited .... hence the massive difference in price ....

If a 'man-in-a-shed' manufactured mass-market specification vehicles on a very limited quantity basis and attempted to compete on price with the likes of Nissan there would need to be a number of very serious compromises which would almost certainly affect product quality or desirability !! ... there would need to be a step change in technology combined with a significant USP to counter this, neither of which are apparent within the pv panel market, so I'd go along with M's view and take relative market position into account when selecting product ....

HTH
Z

HappyMedium_2

We had Solar PV put on our roof in June, the 3.6K system cost £5K. We had about 10 quotes and choose the best, not the cheapest.

We already had 2 solar thermal for the hot water since the house was built 5 years ago. Looked at PV's then and they were about £15K then so they have come down a lot in 5 years.

Very pleased with them and love use free electric to do the washing, tumble drier etc. But do remember to use them one at a time.

Just putting in for my first FIT payment and to my rough calculations it will be around £220. Electric consumption reduced from around 10 units per day to 2-4 units per day.