Solar Advice

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I am considering having solar fitted and a friend has recommended Sustain-UK as that is the company that installed his. They say they can get 10 panels on the roof for £4200 but currently have a cancelled order for a 9 panel system on the van and I can have it installed all in for £3600.. They say it will generate just under 3KW..

£3600 sounds too cheap to me.

Any advice if this is worth it price wise?
 
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Atom said:
I am considering having solar fitted and a friend has recommended Sustain-UK as that is the company that installed his. They say they can get 10 panels on the roof for £4200 but currently have a cancelled order for a 9 panel system on the van and I can have it installed all in for £3600.. They say it will generate just under 3KW.. The panels are either QCell or ZNShine.

£3600 sounds too cheap to me.

Any advice if this is worth it price wise?
Click to expand...

although i cant comment on the company or anything the price isnt that much too cheap (if that makes sense?)

3600/9 = 400

400 * 10 = 4000

Youre saving £200 (effectively) the company obviously would rather just make £200 less to get the money back from the cancelled order
 
iirc it was 7-8000 for our 4kw which is 16 panels....

Odds of a 9 panel doing 3kw is slim in my opinion unless it's the extra large size panels popping up these days.

Price isn't that cheap really, it's about the going rate.
 
Well I didnt bother with Sustain, turned up at the door with no notice and was very pushy wanting to fit them there and then without having chance to read the contract. Paperwork stated it would put out 2111kw when he told me 3kw and the contract had another persons name and address on it. I refused their work after reading it..
 
Had panels fitted 3 months ago. Paid £6300 for 14x 285watt panels 3990watt total. Went for better panels, and solar edge inverters (apparently better though not sure) To give you an idea on price a standard 16x 250 watt panel system is down to £4700 now.

Things to look at are panel brand, inverter brand. Warranty on everything. I paid for extended warranty on everything to cover the full 20 years of feed in tarif. Even covers replacing the inverter.

LG or Benq panels considered the best. Mine are Seraphim branded.

Prices do vary a lot depending on where you are in the world. If you ask on money saving expert forum tons of people will point you at local installers.

Very happy with my install and generation numbers.

Hope this helps
 
It does help, gives me something to go on.

Had another company in and he showed me the in outs and graphs for the parts they would install. He was here an hour and seemed quite genuine.
Quoted £7500 for 16 panels at 4KW.
Just waiting on a quote from another company.
 
£7500 is too high for a 16 panel system. If you have the roof space for 16 panels it should be far cheaper than that.

I did look into mine for months before going for it. I ended up getting SolarEdge Inverter and optimizers. People with them all said they were hitting their monthly KW estimate or a bit more. Plus the warranty was really good. Small cost got 20 years warranty on all of it.

Panels, there are tons of brands. End of the day look for warranty, and performance life time. Most panels say they will still generate 80% after 25 years. Some like mine say 80% after 30 years. Thats written in the guarantee of the panel.

I did go overkill and got about 8 quotes. My fave was from a company called TP Solar. But they are nearly 140 miles from where I live. They would come out for any repair, however a local company 4 miles down the road came in only £8 higher on their quote so thought local were best.

On the subject of quotes, my first quote was nearly £8400. for 14x 250watt panels. After shopping about and researching I ended up paying £6317 for 14x 285 watt panels.

Worth haggling.

Look at solarguide.co.uk plug in your post code, system size, roof direction and that will give you a rough idea of how well your system will really do.
 
Well just had the fitter/salesman from Sustain text me that I owe him £390 for a site survey and efficency survey as I no longer want to go ahead with the solar from him. This was never mentioned before and nothing was signed.

What is my postion as there is nothing signed in writing by myself?
 
I believe the reply is something along the lines of "jog on"

Out of the 8 quotes I got 4 did survey's. They were all free. Just looking at some installers online and none of them mention charging for survey's.
 
I was going to start my own thread, but I guess I'll piggy back here.

We had a door to door salesman selling solar panels at a scheme where you pay nothing for installation and get cheaper bills, but I guess they get some sort of cut from the profits. I don't really know too much about it, but does anyone have a similar scheme to this?
 
My guess is that they would take the FIT. The problem will arise when it comes time to sell the house. You are basically "renting" out your roofspace there.
 
Just had another text they are coming for the money today and if I dont pay they will get the money by alternative methods..
 
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