Project Solar / Duracell/Solar Panels

Hi All,

I am looking to get Solar and Battery and had a quote from Project Solar at the weekend. I have seen that they dont have the best reviews on here, but wanted to share what they have offered and see if I should run or go for it.

4KW system fully fitted with the Boiler Dr (stupid name!!) and new Duracell Battery. They quoted £13,300 with a 10.5 ROI projection.

It does seem a lot to me.

The bit that is selling it to me is the Social Energy bit with energy trading and battery charge trading. This is all very new and the only company offering it so would be tied to them.

Does anyone have any knowledge on this scheme?

Also they stated that I could only have a 4kw system as that is the maximum for the feed in/export. Anything above that I would need local power supplier permissions.....is that true? I had another quote for a 4.88kw system with no mention of that.

Is the Duracell offering good or shall I just stick to Tesla?!

Thanks in advance
«13

Comments

  • Merlin139
    Merlin139 Posts: 6,829
    Name Dropper Photogenic First Post First Anniversary
    Forumite
    mattdsc wrote: »
    Hi All,

    I am looking to get Solar and Battery and had a quote from Project Solar at the weekend. I have seen that they dont have the best reviews on here, but wanted to share what they have offered and see if I should run or go for it. Run Forrest Run! :rotfl:

    4KW system fully fitted with the Boiler Dr (stupid name!!) and new Duracell Battery. They quoted £13,300 with a 10.5 ROI projection. :eek::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl: :eek:

    It does seem a lot to me.

    The bit that is selling it to me is the Social Energy bit with energy trading and battery charge trading. This is all very new and the only company offering it so would be tied to them.

    Get them to show you the contract for this Selling!:rotfl:

    Does anyone have any knowledge on this scheme?

    Also they stated that I could only have a 4kw system as that is the maximum for the feed in/export. Anything above that I would need local power supplier permissions.....is that true? I had another quote for a 4.88kw system with no mention of that.

    Is the Duracell offering good or shall I just stick to Tesla?!

    Thanks in advance

    So many Project Solar threads on this Forum do a search and you will find the same answer everytime!

    Over priced and sold by a company that quotes CRAP!!!
    3.795 kWp Solar PV System. Capital of the Wolds

  • Hi Matt and welcome. Firstly, run as fast as you can, this quote is well over the top. A 4kW system these days tends to command little over £4k or £5k. I've no knowledge of the Duracel battery offer and you do not specify the capacity of it, however, until prices of these reduce considerably batteries are just not yet a viable proposition. For Project Solars ROI figures to be correct they can only be based upon over zealous inflation figures and compounded up at that. In reality I doubt there would ever be a ROI.

    Further answers to your post can be found by reading the thread which the link below takes you too. I'm sure others will add their thoughts but I doubt they'll vary much from what is stated here.



    https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?p=75030732#post75030732
    East coast, lat 51.97. 8.26kw SSE, 23° pitch + 0.59kw WSW vertical. Nissan Leaf plus Zappi charger and 2 x ASHP's. Givenergy 8.2 & 9.5 kWh batts, 2 x 3 kW ac inverters. Indra V2H . CoCharger Host, Interest in Ripple Energy & Abundance.
  • Exiled_Tyke
    Exiled_Tyke Posts: 1,185
    First Anniversary First Post Name Dropper
    Forumite
    Stay well away. A system of this spec and price will never pay for itself.

    You can have a system which generates more than 4kW (I thought the limit was 3.68kW?) but you can only export above that level with DNO permission which (although I'm not expert on this) I believe can be expensive to apply for with no guarantee of it being granted. If the panels are spread across more than one orientation (e.g. some East facing and others West facing) then you will rarely get to the maximum generation of the panels. So you can very feasibly put in your 4.88 kW's worth of panels connected to a smaller inverter. This is actually a very good idea as most of the time your larger that 4kW array will be producing well below it's peak and so the more panels you have the more power you are getting. No doubt Martyn will come along shortly and confirm what I've got right here and correct me where I'm wrong. He's sure to suggest you rip up the Project Solar quote though!

    I've heard that first4solar may be getting into the social energy stuff, but I know nothing more than that and have not seen any reviews of them.
    Install 28th Nov 15, 3.3kW, (11x300LG), SolarEdge, SW. W Yorks.
    Install 2: Sept 19, 600W SSE
    Solax 6.3kWh battery
  • Thanks ever so much for your replies.

    I did have a gut feel it wasn't right, but wanted some reassurance!

    The battery is a 3.3kw battery and has some sort of AI attached to it to trade KW's automatically.

    Any recommendations on who I should use? I do have SunlightFuture coming next week, who have quoted for the 4.88kw system with the Tesla battery.
  • Zarch
    Zarch Posts: 393
    First Anniversary Name Dropper First Post
    Forumite
    Whereabouts in the country are you located?
    17 x 300W panels (5.1kW) on a 3.68kW SolarEdge system in Sunny Sheffield.
    12kW Pylontech battery storage system with Lux AC controller
    Creator of the Energy Stats UK website and @energystatsuk Twitter Feed
  • I am based in Gloucestershire / Tewkesbury no shade at all.

    40 pitch / 45 Orientation
  • Exiled_Tyke
    Exiled_Tyke Posts: 1,185
    First Anniversary First Post Name Dropper
    Forumite
    Batteries are currently not financially viable. If you take the current cost, warrantied life-span, capacity and efficiency of an installed battery, then costs are way in excess of electricity prices.
    Install 28th Nov 15, 3.3kW, (11x300LG), SolarEdge, SW. W Yorks.
    Install 2: Sept 19, 600W SSE
    Solax 6.3kWh battery
  • mre15
    mre15 Posts: 85
    First Post First Anniversary
    Forumite
    mattdsc I also live in the Gloucester area and have recently had a quote from Roxon, a local electrical firm which was 4.6KW fully fitted for under £5k. (no batteries)

    Might be worth giving them a chance to quote.
    4.6kWp PV Comprising 16 x Jinko Solar Maxim Optimised 290W panels SSE Facing, Solis Hybrid Inverter and 7.2 kWh Pylontech batteries. Gloucestershire.
  • pinnks
    pinnks Posts: 1,257
    First Anniversary First Post Name Dropper Photogenic
    Forumite
    As others have said, over-priced and if you read the other thread on that firm from today you will see they adopt the good old bad old double glazing tactics of massive "discounts" from an over-inflated starting point. Don't walk away, run and forget you ever invited them into your world!

    Nobody on here has any affiliation to any installers etc, so ask all the questions you need and listen to the replies as people are keen to offer whatever help they can.

    Batteries are still just too expensive unless you have very deep pockets and don't care about any return on that part of the investment. If that were not the case, half the people on here would have batteries and be singing their praises.

    I for one would be one of those. I use about 3,600kWh per year of which about half is from my solar, half from the grid. I generate about 4,400kWh, so 800kWh more than my total consumption and about 2,600kWh more than my current own consumption. If batteries were economically viable I could provide 100% of my needs and still export a tonne.

    But, look at the numbers. If I self-consumed the ~1,800kWh I currently import I would save £235 per year at 13p per kWh. If I installed a battery it would cost, say, £4,000, and would take 17 years to break even. Given that the expected life of batteries is about 10 years you would always be chasing your financial tail.

    And to get a battery that could both supply our max required load (induction hob plus oven at Christmas?) and store enough to see us through the dark months without importing anything is probably not possible and if it were, would probably cost more than £4,000!

    If prices come down below £2,000 I'll be taking the flexible friend out of my wallet but not until that happens...:beer:
  • Interestingly they have dropped by £1100 since saying its to expensive and I wish to cancel.

    Interesting read from The Energyst:

    Start-up Social Energy is partnering with Duracell in a bid to crack domestic demand-side response. The firm thinks it can amass a 350MW portfolio of 3kW and 6kW home battery storage units by 2020.

    The company has landed a megawatt firm frequency response (FFR) contract with National Grid, having passed tests for frequency measurement and metering at device level. It is thought to be the first domestic battery company to achieve that feat.

    Initially partnering with battery maker BYD during beta phase, it will launch commercially with Duracell in early 2019.

    The company claims it can unlock greater revenue for home batteries by using machine learning to predict household load and generation and optimise responses at sub-second level. It aims to use its software to export and import at best prices, as well as earn money by providing frequency services to the Electricity System Operator.

    Social Energy claims the money it can make for battery owners will drastically reduce household bills, particularly for households that combine solar and storage.

    Yet 350MW is quite a lot of 3kW battery packs, 116,667 units to be precise, equivalent to penetrating about 13% of the UK domestic solar market in two years from a standing start.

    The company, however, is bullish and is looking beyond the UK.

    “We have the funding, the route to market and the factory capacity to achieve the plan,” director Julian Wiley told The Energyst, though he said the company would concentrate on customer experience over growth.

    He said the product has been “five years in the making” and backed its algorithms to unlock higher value for domestic DSR than previously possible. Social Energy’s press material states this could be as much as 400% higher.

    The company also claims its order book “already stands at 12MW per month in the UK alone”. It plans to use partnerships with Duracell and others to aggressively expand into markets including the US, Australia, Germany and Japan where it is currently testing units.
Meet your Ambassadors

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 342.4K Banking & Borrowing
  • 249.9K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 449.4K Spending & Discounts
  • 234.6K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 607K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 172.8K Life & Family
  • 247.4K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 15.8K Discuss & Feedback
  • 15.1K Coronavirus Support Boards