Solar PV - current pricing

NeilW

Probably worth breaking this out for others to pick up on.

Solstats is reporting that the average German installation costs for Solar PV is down to 1.64EUR ex tax per Wp.

That equates to about £1.40 per Wp *inc VAT* here in the UK.

http://www.solstats.com/blog/solar-energy/solar-panel-costs-drop-by-a-third-since-2011/

Now clearly the market isn't as competitive here as it is in Germany. However it's worth remembering that the Germans can put systems on the roof for that sort of money.

Currently the equipment for a 4kWp 'granny pack' costs the installer about £3K ex. tax. VAT on Solar PV installations is 5%. An installation should take about 2-3 days. Use that to work out the day rate.

Solar PV installation is essentially a roofing job and an electrical wiring job, and should be compared with that sort of work to get a fair rate.

Nobody has any problem paying a fair rate for the job, but there is a heck of a lot of gouging going on in Solar PV.

Hopefully now you can haggle a bit harder.

nigelpm

NeilW wrote: »

Currently the equipment for a 4kWp 'granny pack' costs the installer about £3K ex. tax. VAT on Solar PV installations is 5%. An installation should take about 2-3 days. Use that to work out the day rate.

Solar PV installation is essentially a roofing job and an electrical wiring job, and should be compared with that sort of work to get a fair rate.

Nobody has any problem paying a fair rate for the job, but there is a heck of a lot of gouging going on in Solar PV.

Hopefully now you can haggle a bit harder.

It's not as simple as that though is it.

There's also :

Ongoing maintenance costs and staff to deal with this.
Their premises and overheads costs
Scaffolding costs

Certainly one shouldn't be paying much above £6k now for a simple single inverter 4Kw system mind.

captainhindsight_2

NeilW wrote: »

Probably worth breaking this out for others to pick up on.

Solstats is reporting that the average German installation costs for Solar PV is down to 1.64EUR ex tax per Wp.

That equates to about £1.40 per Wp *inc VAT* here in the UK.

http://www.solstats.com/blog/solar-energy/solar-panel-costs-drop-by-a-third-since-2011/

Now clearly the market isn't as competitive here as it is in Germany. However it's worth remembering that the Germans can put systems on the roof for that sort of money.

Currently the equipment for a 4kWp 'granny pack' costs the installer about £3K ex. tax. VAT on Solar PV installations is 5%. An installation should take about 2-3 days. Use that to work out the day rate.

Solar PV installation is essentially a roofing job and an electrical wiring job, and should be compared with that sort of work to get a fair rate.

Nobody has any problem paying a fair rate for the job, but there is a heck of a lot of gouging going on in Solar PV.

Hopefully now you can haggle a bit harder.

You clearly don't run your own business...

Any solar business has these overheads minimum:

office
rates
phones
staff
advertising
vehicles
road tax
insurance
accreditation membership fees
equipment
annual calibration of relevant equiptment
correspondence
pre-installation surveys
time wasters
building control notices
mcs notices
epcs
auditing costs
training
CPD
and so on...

Its not as simple as the cost of equipment plus a couple of guys day rates. These costs are included in the job, then they have to make a profit on top of all of that. Its not a walk in the park!

EricMears

nigelpm wrote: »

It's not as simple as that though is it.

There's also :

Ongoing maintenance costs and staff to deal with this.
Their premises and overheads costs
Scaffolding costs

Certainly one shouldn't be paying much above £6k now for a simple single inverter 4Kw system mind.

If you're comparing UK costs with German ones, all those points are incurred in Germany too. Indeed, I suspect you might even find that German labour rates are actually higher than UK ones.

lisyloo

I understand this is an MSE site, but I was happy to pay a decent price for a first class company. I don't want the owrst company coming and then having leaks in the roof !!
One important axiom of MSE is that cheapest is not always best.
MSE for me is about VALUE not cheapest.
I got a variety of quotes and actually the return on investment was better on the higher quotes, so as well as having more confident in the installers bing good at the job and staying in business I am hoping for a better return as a result of investing more. After all if it's a good investment then surely you want to nvest as much as you can don't you????

No-one want's to be gounged or ripped-off but screwing everyone down to the lowest possible penny is not good business long term.
That measn those that cut corners will stay in business and those that want to do a good job will be out of work.

MSE for me is about VALUE and GOOD business.

I'm delighted with my system and it's performing above expectations even though I chose the most expensive option.

Buying quality often works out better long term and being a cheapskate can be a false economy.

nigelpm

EricMears wrote: »

If you're comparing UK costs with German ones, all those points are incurred in Germany too. Indeed, I suspect you might even find that German labour rates are actually higher than UK ones.

I wasn't! Just to clarify I was responding to the point that :



Currently the equipment for a 4kWp 'granny pack' costs the installer about £3K ex. tax. VAT on Solar PV installations is 5%.
An installation should take about 2-3 days. Use that to work out the day rate.

Solar PV installation is essentially a roofing job and an electrical wiring job, and should be compared with that sort of work to get a fair rate.

Which is why I just quoted that in my post!

ed110220

NeilW wrote: »

Probably worth breaking this out for others to pick up on.

Solstats is reporting that the average German installation costs for Solar PV is down to 1.64EUR ex tax per Wp.

That equates to about £1.40 per Wp *inc VAT* here in the UK.

http://www.solstats.com/blog/solar-energy/solar-panel-costs-drop-by-a-third-since-2011/

Now clearly the market isn't as competitive here as it is in Germany. However it's worth remembering that the Germans can put systems on the roof for that sort of money.

Currently the equipment for a 4kWp 'granny pack' costs the installer about £3K ex. tax. VAT on Solar PV installations is 5%. An installation should take about 2-3 days. Use that to work out the day rate.

Solar PV installation is essentially a roofing job and an electrical wiring job, and should be compared with that sort of work to get a fair rate.

Nobody has any problem paying a fair rate for the job, but there is a heck of a lot of gouging going on in Solar PV.

Hopefully now you can haggle a bit harder.

Well £1.40 per Wp equates to £5600 for 4 kW, which seems about the most most competitive rate here.

Probably a generalisation but Germany tends to be competitive by investing in technology, training and efficiency in general while Britain prefers to try to make money by gouging and/or cheap labour.

Averages in these sort of situations can be a little misleading as obviously no-one will install at a price that makes a loss, but some will gouge, so taking an average may not be sensible.

Ed

nigelpm

The data is also difficult to compare as you need to know what the average installation size is in their dataset.

If it's 6Kw then clearly it will be cheaper as a larger proportion of the cost is in the panels and not the fixed installation costs.

Martyn1981

NeilW wrote: »

That equates to about £1.40 per Wp *inc VAT* here in the UK.

Funny you should say that, that equates to £5.6k for a 4kWp system, and I was only pondering a few days ago:

Martyn1981 wrote: »

@tunnel, ....

..... I like to suggest aiming for under £7k and a 'tough' target of £6k, but I'm starting to wonder if £6k ain't so 'tough' anymore?

Within days, tunnel came back with a quote for his parents of:

tunnel wrote: »

Had the quotes in for my parents,
16 x eco future 250W panels(suntellites) + 1 samil inverter...£5.3k, with a sunnyboy £5.6k
or
16 Canadian solars and samil..£5.4k, with sunnyboy £5.7k

There have also been a few other MSE PV'ers posting install prices/quotes recently that are under £6k for 4kWp.

[There were some even lower in early 2013, but the EU v's China PV pricing arrangement pushed them up.]

nigelpm wrote: »

If it's 6Kw then clearly it will be cheaper as a larger proportion of the cost is in the panels and not the fixed installation costs.

Very good point, I think I'm right in saying that a lot of the German systems are quite a bit larger than ours.

And Ed's point is important, an average can include silly high prices, but can't include silly low prices, as the installers won't go below breakeven. The same argument presumably applies in Germany too, but I suspect (may be totally wrong ) that they may be a little wiser to the high end silly quotes.

All interesting stuff. I love a good ponder.

Mart.