WHICH LTD - Wondering whether it's worth forking out for solar panels? We've crunched all the num -

Hexane

Seen something like this recommended to you on your feed recently? You're not the first.

Please don't trust anything these charlatans have to say. "The vast majority of the association's income comes from the profit it makes on its trading businesses" - that means fooling you.

If you want to learn about solar panels then you can learn right here. The nonsense that "Which Ltd" are promoting, is based on data anywhere between 5 and 25 years old, all of which is now irrelevant.

Don't be fooled! Do NOT sign up to these scam schemes.

Screwdriva

Got a link to an example?

Hexane

I don't want to encourage them by promoting their misleading information by linking to it, but the one that's being pushed in my feed (appeared again yesterday) is credited to "Karen Lawrence" and claims that "We've split solar panel prices by system size, type of property and how much electricity they generate to help you estimate if you're buying solar panels".

Amongst other things it says "Solar panel prices have dropped dramatically since 2011, and fallen again over the past couple of years" (second part of that is plainly WRONG). It then goes on to quote figures claiming that the "median average cost per kilowatt" of PV installs of 4kW or less in 2020/2021 was £1,429. This might be true if people were getting ripped off left right and centre, and indeed that figure might be accurate now following recent price increases, but quoting such extremely high costs as being normal does a disservice to anyone wanting to find out what a reasonable price is. The advice on this forum in 2020/2021 was clear and unequivocal; you should be aiming to pay in the region of £1,000 per kWp installed.

The article is filled with little tables showing things like "Solar panel cost by electricity use" (yes, an entirely useless statistic) and the costs in the tables aren't displayed unless you pay to sign up as a Which member. The article doesn't even attempt to make an estimate of potential pay-back times, and doesn't even mention the impact of higher energy prices on the financial viability of buying a solar PV installation. Instead it has useless information like mentioning that the average costs of a solar PV install on terraced, semi-detached and detached houses are all different - useless statistics that, again, you can unlock by paying to sign up as a Which member.

The article then has a "Which Trusted Traders search tool" to pick your installer from. These companies are presumably eager to hear from potential customers who've just read an article telling them that a 4kWp solar PV system will on average cost more to install for people who have higher than average annual electricity consumption.

About the only thing the article gets right is that it does recommend getting three quotes. It does mention that panel and inverter quality can vary, but doesn't explain anything about how to obtain good quality components, nor does it mention warranties and guarantees.

rew81

Well pointed.