"Simplee Solar" / Energy Watch

Cardew

redwasp wrote: »

Hi all,

Has anyone had any experience with a solar energy company called Sky Energy?


Cheers

Look at post #60 in this thread. Simplee Solar supply to Sky Energy

tom154uk

Sky energy are being featured on rogue traders this friday at 7-30
It is a rerun of the program shown last year.

Getting on to something different, the article in yesterdays sunday times.
I spoke to Ali Hussian at the times regarding this story 2 weeks before.
Mr robinson the person who wrote to them had a Simplee Solar system installed in 2005 at the time he was with powergen, but decided to change his energy supplier to EDF as he thought he was paying to much, In a letter to ourselves Mr Robinson stated he THINKS one of our employers recommended EDF, then in a letter to the times his words change to a director of Simplee Solar,a big difference from think.Mr robinson also completed a six month monitoring program on his system returning the results to ourselves, the monitoring resuts proving the system was working plus Mr Robinson,s first letter was faxed to Ali Hussain at the sunday times,Ivan Hancock the head of Dorset Trading standards also spoke to Ali Hussain for over 45 minutes and was told how much progress and safeguards we had made to ensure customers could not be mis-led by salespeople from our company. You have to realise we have little control over salespeople once they are in a customers house, the Dorset Trading standards are very happy with the safeguards we have put in place to eliminate this possibilty,it is revolutionary in direct sales and makes it near impossible for a customer to be mis-led.

Moving on to the ASA, as has been mentioned on here we had a ruling against ourselves about using subsidys. We were never given a proper chance to defend this until after the ruling, below is a copy of the email sent to myself from the ASA a few weeks after the ruling when we then informed them and forwarded proof.

Thank you for your email, we are satisfied that you have proved that some customers are able to receive a subsidy provided they participate in the marketing scheme. However, we are concerned that the conditional and limited availability of this offer is not clear enough. We suggest you change “Participating customers will qualify for a significant savings towards the cost of installation” to “Participating customers could qualify”. We also think it is important that you include a qualification in the mailing about the limitations which apply to this offer.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind you, you must hold robust documentary evidence for every claim you make.

If you agree to the above changes I am prepared to close our file on this matter.

Kind regards

Sarah


Sarah Bedding
Compliance Executive

So as you can see we proved our case, but the ruling still stands against ourselves.

As you see no matter what we do as a company it seems some people will always look for problems that dont exist,as proved with the sunday times, there was no story,it was rehashed stuff from last year, if they really wanted a story, they should have written about the changes we have made since.

Also a comment made above reguarding west facing installations, if a solar panel is fitted to a west only facing roof, no matter what you are told, ie tilting the panel, solar needs the sun that is a fact, the sun will not get over the roof ridge until midday in the summer later in the winter, so it doesnt take a expert to work out it can not be anywhere near as effient as an east\west installation

trisontana

I have two questions for Tom154UK.

What is your answer to the points raised in the Sunday Times that the average saving on solar hot water system is only about 5.5% ?
And that the average price for such a system should be between £3,000 and £4,000 and that anything above that price is much to high ?

tom154uk

Firstly the S.T.A stated i quote.

He said he would “seriously question” any salesman claiming a saving of more than 30% on a household’s total energy bill using thermal solar panels.

In answer to your 2nd question:
Our systems sell for anything between £4500-£7000 depending on the installation,ie: maiins pressure, scaffolding, planning permission,east\west, larger cylinders.
I think you,ll find these prices quoted are for a south facing standard installation, and more important our system is only sold by ourselves as we have sole rights, it is a high spec system which we would happily put against any other system in the UK.

tom154uk

I am digusted with the comment by Cardew in a above comment, Simplee solar supply sky energy.
If you read the article properly you will see that it was simplee solar that gave the story to rogue traders, at NO time have we supplied Sky Energy with any of our products.

trisontana

You sort of answered my question about the savings by saying that it could never be "over 30%". Can you be more specific and give us what you think your system saves on typical household energy bill.

As to the second question, why are your systems much more expensive than the market norm?

tom154uk

As i have mentioned in a previous post,the results from our system.
It is possible to achieve upto 73.6% of your hot water using 2sqm of simplee solar panels, as we use a minimum of 3sqms we expect more,The BRE stated in their reserch that upto 40% of your total energy bills is for hotwater.
40X73.6 = 29.44% but as stated above we use a minimum of 3sqms so would expect upto 30%, which are the figures related to potential customers, it is also explained to them these figures depend on your hot water usage.

Read my answer to your 2nd question in the earlier reply, i answered the question.

tom154uk

I meant to respond to this earlier.
It was your post that informed us of another company using a name very very similar to ours, we informed companies house who agreed the names were to similar and forced the offending company to change their name.
Thankyou.
Tom Callaghan
Director
Simplee Solar Ltd

tom154uk

If Redwasp was to send me a private message i might well be able to give some advice, i,m not prepared to on a open thread, but he will thank me.
The other option of course is to visit our website in which case our telephone number is available, and of course my name is plastered all over here, so shouldn,t be to hard to get in touch.

Cardew

tom154uk wrote: »

As i have mentioned in a previous post,the results from our system.
It is possible to achieve upto 73.6% of your hot water using 2sqm of simplee solar panels, as we use a minimum of 3sqms we expect more,The BRE stated in their reserch that upto 40% of your total energy bills is for hotwater.
40X73.6 = 29.44% but as stated above we use a minimum of 3sqms so would expect upto 30%, which are the figures related to potential customers, it is also explained to them these figures depend on your hot water usage.

May I make some comments.

Firstly I totally accept that Domestic Hot water can(in bizarre circumstances) account for "up to" 40% of your total energy bills. Of course the use of the term “up to” is the key and is the reason why this terminology is used by your type of organisation; as it also means it could account for 1%. Both percentage figures(the implied 40% and 1%) fall in the “up to 40%” category and both figures are equally meaningless.

People no doubt spend up to 40% of their income on alcohol and cigarettes; but to suggest or imply 40% is typical?

Likewise the same logic applies to your statement "It is possible to achieve "up to" 73.6% of your hot water" Doubtless true but certainly misleading when implying this is typical.

I would suggest that the much quoted statement that DHW accounts for 24% of average gas consumption(20,500kWh) is pretty representative. Approx 5,000kWh.
Would you agree?

Turning to the output from Solar panels.

I assume you have read this DTI report.

http://www.dti.gov.uk/files/file16826.pdf

For the benefit of other readers(and not yourself of course) I should explain it is very technical but basically the DTI tested 8 systems (flat panel and Evacuated tube) side by side for a year situated in Southern England(Kew -Surrey) – all were South facing with an unobstructed view.

They drew off 150 litres, in one go, each day on one test and in 3 smaller amounts in another.

I have converted the annual output to kWh.

The lowest annual output was 955kWh the highest was 1,350kWh.

So if you have gas, depending on the efficiency of your boiler, your cost per kWh is approx 2.5 pence.

So you are looking at annual savings of £24 to £34.

However the annual electrical consumption running the pump varied from zero on one system(solar twin) to 108kWh. So from those savings you could deduct up to £10.

So from Government tests it demonstrates that annual savings from solar Hot Water would range from about £15 a year to £27 if you have gas. and possibly as high as £45 for other fuels(if you live in Southern England)

That is of course leaving out any maintenance that might be required.

Now I appreciate that you will wish to add in predicted fuel price inflation etc. However, so we have a level playing field would you please comment if my summary is accurate. If it is not would you please indicate where you feel it is inaccurate – with your figures.

Could you then please compare them with the anticipated output from your system. Please use outputs in kWh rather than xx% of DHW requirement as xx% of an unknown figure is not easy to visualise.

Let me make a prediction. You will procrastinate, obfuscate, but not quote an expected/typical/achieved output in kWh of your system.

So why not prove me wrong and quote output in kWh per year – that’s all we ask.

Of course once we have that figure, we can all work out savings at 2007 rates.

But you are not going to give us that figure are you?