Pigeons nesting under my panels

mickyduck55

I paid £700 to have my sons roof and mine done (about 20 miles apart).  He has two separate arrays of 10 panels and I have one of 17 panels.  No insecticide used just mesh on both.  Mine silver to match aluminium old style panels his black to match his

unhappyroofer

I have solar panels fitted by Ashadegreener. Two months ago I informed them that I suspected a  leek on my roof was allowing rainwater to access my garage roof, travel down their electric cable from the solar panels and collect near the junction box. I am still awaiting a response from their inspection of my roof.  I have now decided to hit them where it hurts by reducing their profit made on my solar panels. When it sun-shines electricity is generated from the panels. This electricity is free to me to use. Any unused electricity is fed into the national grid and ashadegreener receives payment for this. Until I receive a satisfactory response, from today I am going to use as much free electricity as possible. I will switch on the dish water, use the washing machine, boil copious amounts of water, turn on the electric cooker, switch on electric heaters. switch on all the lights. The knack will be to use the free electricity and not go beyond the use where I then need to pay for it so reducing the profit Ashadegreener make on my panels. If all customers were to do this their profits would fall drastically. Perhaps then customers would be responded to more quickly. Who will join me?

kdotdotdotdot

unhappyroofer said:

I have solar panels fitted by Ashadegreener. Two months ago I informed them that I suspected a  leek on my roof was allowing rainwater to access my garage roof, travel down their electric cable from the solar panels and collect near the junction box. I am still awaiting a response from their inspection of my roof.  I have now decided to hit them where it hurts by reducing their profit made on my solar panels. When it sun-shines electricity is generated from the panels. This electricity is free to me to use. Any unused electricity is fed into the national grid and ashadegreener receives payment for this. Until I receive a satisfactory response, from today I am going to use as much free electricity as possible. I will switch on the dish water, use the washing machine, boil copious amounts of water, turn on the electric cooker, switch on electric heaters. switch on all the lights. The knack will be to use the free electricity and not go beyond the use where I then need to pay for it so reducing the profit Ashadegreener make on my panels. If all customers were to do this their profits would fall drastically. Perhaps then customers would be responded to more quickly. Who will join me?

Appreciate you're upset, but I think you're kind of missing the point of being green and ethical.  Wasting energy is wasting energy. 

The solar panels aren't made from unicorn dreams - there's a genuine cost to the planet in having them - so it's immoral to waste the energy produced by them because you've got a grudge against the company that installed them.

Hexane

kdotdotdotdot said:

unhappyroofer said:

I have solar panels fitted by Ashadegreener. Two months ago I informed them that I suspected a  leek on my roof was allowing rainwater to access my garage roof, travel down their electric cable from the solar panels and collect near the junction box. I am still awaiting a response from their inspection of my roof.  I have now decided to hit them where it hurts by reducing their profit made on my solar panels. When it sun-shines electricity is generated from the panels. This electricity is free to me to use. Any unused electricity is fed into the national grid and ashadegreener receives payment for this. Until I receive a satisfactory response, from today I am going to use as much free electricity as possible. I will switch on the dish water, use the washing machine, boil copious amounts of water, turn on the electric cooker, switch on electric heaters. switch on all the lights. The knack will be to use the free electricity and not go beyond the use where I then need to pay for it so reducing the profit Ashadegreener make on my panels. If all customers were to do this their profits would fall drastically. Perhaps then customers would be responded to more quickly. Who will join me?

Appreciate you're upset, but I think you're kind of missing the point of being green and ethical.  Wasting energy is wasting energy. 

The solar panels aren't made from unicorn dreams - there's a genuine cost to the planet in having them - so it's immoral to waste the energy produced by them because you've got a grudge against the company that installed them.

Indeed, and also unhappyroofer's cunning plan has another flaw - it probably wont reduce Ashadegreener's profits at all anyway. Unless installed very recently or under an unusual arrangement, the payments received by Ashadegreener will be based on deemed export not metered export. Therefore they will be paid based on what the panels generate, not based on what is actually exported to the grid. So turning on high energy use devices won't affect their income at all. In addition, the majority of their income is probably from the Feed In Tariff payments (not export payments) so are unaffected by how much is or is not exported.

If you believe your solar power setup is unsafe, then turn it off at the isolator. This may also eventually have the effect of encouraging Ashadegreener to take a closer interest in the setup, because it will affect generation meter readings because nothing will be generated. But it will also lose you the benefit of lower bills due to lower electric usage. And like many large companies, Ashadegreener may not be organised enough to notice the lower generation readings or care about them.

EricMears

Hexane said:

Indeed, and also unhappyroofer's cunning plan has another flaw - it probably wont reduce Ashadegreener's profits at all anyway. Unless installed very recently or under an unusual arrangement, the payments received by Ashadegreener will be based on deemed export not metered export. Therefore they will be paid based on what the panels generate, not based on what is actually exported to the grid. So turning on high energy use devices won't affect their income at all. In addition, the majority of their income is probably from the Feed In Tariff payments (not export payments) so are unaffected by how much is or is not exported.

I was thinking along the same lines but didn't post it as I was under the impression that any FIT recipient (including ASG) was free to continue receiving the generation element of FIT but opt out of the deemed export element and setting up a new SEG contract.

I'm sure I read that on these pages although on another forum,  somebody insisted that setting up a SEG would cancel a FIT contract.   Is there anybody here who has actually done that or is the other chap right ?

Of course (even if I am right),  ASG couldn't set up a SEG contract unless the meter was upgraded to 'smart' and their standard contract might not include a provision for forcing their victims to agree to that

poindexter

Read through this thread with interest as we're in the same boat, and we've had similar experiences with ASG.  We have the pigeon problem, and I'll come back to that, but we've had a bad time with ASG on another front which should be mentioned.  We were looking into Equity Release and it turns out Lenders aren't very keen if you have leased solar panels.  Legal & General for one is an outright refusal, others want to examine the lease.  If you can't find yours, ASG charge £180 plus VAT for a copy!

Anyway, pigeons.   I don't know how many we've got nesting cosily up there but they make a terrible racket, the patio needs washing down every day, and we get dead birds and smashed eggs now and again.  ASG quote silly amounts to fix things - you all know that.

I have found from the lease agreement that ASG is responsible for maintenance and upkeep of the panels.  Has anyone gone along this route?  Wouldn't this include a regular inspection?  In 9 years no-one has been to check the panels and it is the Tenant's (ASG) responsibilty to keep them in good condition.  It's not an answer to the pigeon problem, but I'm thinking that as Landlords we should expect the things our Tenant has on our property are kept clean and, if the Landlords together start demanding this is done on a regular basis, ASG might decide that it is cheaper in the long run to pigeon-proof the panels.

Any opinions?

nyermen

I would suggest a new thread, since this one is long and almost 6 months stale.

One comment: I believe even pigeon nests are protected?
https://www.rspb.org.uk/birds-and-wildlife/advice/wildlife-and-the-law/birds-in-the-roof/how-to-stop-birds-nesting-in-roofs/

mickyduck55

I started this thread as you say quite some time ago ... my problem was solved by installing mesh £300.. money well spent ... I still get a lot of pigeons in my garden but now mostly wood pigeons... they chase off the feral ones. 

The link you have posted does say that an authorised person can kill feral pigeons ... authorised bring the owner of the property as defined in the same article?

Aia

We paid about £600 for the scaffolding, which was done with standard layout for solar panels,

we then repaired the ridge that had been damaged with high wind and fitted a dry ridge system (its screwed down instead of cement/morter)

repaired some cracked tiles,

investigated the solar panel faults, this was down to cheap solar connectors that had started to corrode inside.

We used a galvansied pvc coated mesh, as we wanted it to last as long as possible

https://www.birdcontrol.uk.com/shop/product/black-pvc-coated-solar-mesh/

this was the only real product that was available and I spent way to much time researching alternatives. this had a smaller mesh size than any of the close alternatives ( but those were not pvc coated) so it would stop small birds as well.

they sell a kit, but I bought their clips off ebay. the washers are on the small side so I would buy the alternatives available (but are those uv stablised?) they come with a locking nut which is definitely needed. I tried to avoid galvanised mesh from unknown sources as they are mass produced with the minimum of galvanising .

their clips seem to flex down as its tightened so they don't feel as secure as we would like. the mesh is 1.5mm and this was thinner than i was expecting or any videos lead you to believe. it will keep the pigeons out, but it was more flexible than I would have liked.

Anyway we bought birdspikes from screwfix to cover the ridge (which were glued down).

UV stablised zip ties were also bought from them, and were mainly used to secure the connectors and cabling from touching the roof.

the MC4 connectors were purchased from RS components and they are genuine MC4 connectors. I'm guessing the "compatible" (aka Chinese clone) ones have a red rubber seal

You should get the mesh on as quick as possible as the pigeons return every evening. even if its on temporarily while you do any repairs or maintenance.

I would seriously advise that people check their connectors of their solar panels, either have someone do it for you, or turn the system off in the evening and buy an mc4 disconnection tool (its a little plastic tool that pushes the tabs in so it can be disconnected. We do get a lot of consistent rain in our country.

We found many corroded connectors and ones that had micro cracks.

Also water had got in to one of the solar panel junction box causing corrosion and were able to repair this. So it might be a good idea to also have the panels voltages checked (its output was exactly half of the other panels) it required some cleaning up and soldering (videos online)

Ectophile

The pigeons seem to have found my roof this year, after 7 years of never seeing them.  I'm not sure of they are actually nesting under the panels, or just using the edge as a handy ledge.  Either way, the driveway below is constantly being covered with twigs, and I expect my gutters are now full of twigs, too.