April 1st - July 31st

[SolarCity]

Okay, in this recent window we have installed a grand total of - 14 jobs.

It doesn't take an expert to work out that we can't go on at that rate. This new rate could well finish us off.

I'm not a great salesperson - I don't like bull**** and I always tell our customers the truth. But I'm no expert at marketing either. We have done leaflet drops at targetted areas and come up with nothing.

I honestly don't know how to approach this new deadline. It is clear that a lot of installers can install for a lot less than I can. It is also clear, and not at all unrelated I would imagine, that a lot of installs have been put in by - lets be frank - idiots.

The price of an install is now far too low in my opinion. I blame the MCS, the training schemes and Greg Barker for that.

I blame the training schemes for making the training too easy - I blame the MCS for allowing this kind of thing by not demanding a high enough standard of work - I blame Greg Barker for basing his figures on the low-end price installs.

Overall, I blame the Conservative climate-skeptics and the shoot-from-the-hip media coverage for the shocking state of the green industry in general.

P****D OFF

 

[JulianC]

Sadly, I think the days of the dedicated PV company are numbered. For us, it is in the process of being relegated to a (relatively lucrative) sideline. We're not sales people either, but I count that as a positive. We are honest with customers and it has won us work. Marketing is our biggest problem though - virtually no one knows we exist!!

As regards system prices - I am resigned to the fact that we will now offer 'kits' as well as bespoke systems. I have been guilty of head-up-arse syndrome, convinced that only quality gear used in a system designed on expensive software by an engineering graduate is good enough. However, the more I look the more I see bog standard offerings performing just as well.

My prices are only lower because component costs have come down. Labour/scaff/warranty/survey/margins all relatively unaffected. And we will still install to the same standard we always have. Let's face it, it doesn't take much more time and effort to do it properly in the first place. Still worth doing for us, but we're not going to get rich from it!

You're right though - there is a frightening lack of basic knowledge and understanding amongst installers. Some of the questions asked on places like LinkedIn, by established companies, are frightening. The training courses aren't too easy per se, they're just plain crap. Totally lacking in the fundamental aspects of good system design and installation. Well, the pi55-poor NICEIC one I did was. Having said that, is PV really any different to any other electrical work in this respect? Plenty of shoddy, overpriced and just plain wrong installations there too. Has been since the year dot.

Think of PV as any other electrical installation work, only with more paperwork, and things don't look quite so bad.....

Anyone interested in buying under and over sink electric water heaters?!

 

[SRE]

For what it's worth, we're starting to buy kits to reduce time in the office, but tweaking them slightly to suit our customers. Where we would hesitantly offer Yingli in the past they are becoming our panel of choice for silver frames and we're looking for bargain bucket options if we're really pushed on price.

Our marketing always has been and always will be personal, customer focused service and importantly to our customers - local. This came up again last night when we were asked if we could do 6.5k, we said we couldn't but the customer was welcome to knock on our door if there were any problems. We're significantly more expensive but I have my fingers crossed for the sale later this week.

Installed 9 systems since April. Nothing in April, 6 in May, nothing in June and 3 in July. BUT got 3 enquiries on the go since Monday - weird!

 

[Gavin A]

I think we've done 20 in that period, including 1 x 30kW, which is a bit over half the number we need to be installing on average at the lower margins we're having to work to now, so far from sustainable.

I reckon it'll take us a year of working at an average of 3/4 capacity for us to get back to the financial position we were in at the end of March, so I well understand the companies that cut their losses and shut up shop or laid most of their staff off at the end of March now.

The bad summer weather on top of everything else has been a real killer I reckon, so hopefully it will improve for the back end of the summer.

 

[Energetic]

We did 0 in March, 0 in April, 0 in May, 4 in June and 8 in July. We are working on the theory that this will be our worst quarter ever (and keeping fingers crossed a bit) and if that turns out to be the case are reasonable happy with what we ended up doing.

We had an excellent conversion ratio in this period but just didn't have many enquiries. We only had one customer really push us hard on price, (sweet little old housewife) on the rest we maintained a fairly good margin.

We had one customer turn evangelical on us and talked his next door neighbour and a mate from the golf club into going ahead with us which really boosted our quarter, if we'd not got him things would not look quite as good.

3 complete calendar months with not a single job was a bit scary but we had a good feb and managed to hold our nerve.