Octopus SEG tariff barriers

danielle246

My solar panels were installed in March 2023. I have been chasing an MCS certificate & G98 certificate since then in order to set up a SEG tarif with my energy  supplier Octopus. My understanding is that an MCS certificate is not a legal or mandatory requirement, however, if you cannot obtain one if your installers were not MCS accredited or not tesponding to your requests, Octopus will charge £250 admin fee to set you up without one. However, this is not guaranteed & if this fails you are only entitled to £150 refund!
As they offer 15p per kwh the grid has received so far 9 months of our generated energy free of charge, as although we have a G98 this paper is useless on its own, even if we decided to pay the admin fee they DO NOT backdate the payments for exported energy, even if we can prove energy exported.
Daylight robbery!

Reed_Richards

Daylight robbery?  What did you expect was going to happen when you had your solar panels installed?  If you were led to believe that getting payment for your exported electricity would be easier, maybe it is your installers who "robbed" you?  Or go elsewhere for your SEG payment if you don't like Octopus.

Aishee

We have the same, we moved into a property with solar panels but no paperwork, we are just getting the paperwork sorted but they have said they won’t backdate to when we moved into, is this right / allowed? 

matt_drummer

Aishee said:

We have the same, we moved into a property with solar panels but no paperwork, we are just getting the paperwork sorted but they have said they won’t backdate to when we moved into, is this right / allowed? 

Yes.

No energy retailer has had, or will have any benefit from your solar panels until the paperwork is sorted and they will only benefit from that point onwards.

Your solicitor should have dealt with this before you bought the property.

QrizB

Aishee said:

We have the same, we moved into a property with solar panels but no paperwork, we are just getting the paperwork sorted but they have said they won’t backdate to when we moved into, is this right / allowed?

Yes it is.

On the plus side, at this time of year you won't be missing out on much and should hopefully have everything sorted before we get into the batter generating season from March.

Netexporter

I got my SEG with Octopus sorted in exactly one week from applying. I did lose a couple of weeks because I hadn't realised that the DNO letter and MCS certificate had been available a couple of days after installation was completed. The moral of the story is to start chasing the installer for the papers straight away.

greenbee

I had my installation completed on a Wednesday, the installer got the DNO letter and MCS cert to me later than day, and Octopus had me set up by the Friday. As @Netexporter says, it's down to the installer doing the paperwork, not the energy company - you'd have the same problem with any of the other energy providers without the paperwork.