How are things in solar PV land?

[JulianC]

Afternoon chaps. Thought I'd stick me head in here to see how you're all doing with pv these days? Is there much happening? I still get the trade press sent to me and they are continually harping on about stable markets, steady growth blah blah blah, but I see precious little happening up on the roof tops round here. Are large scale solar farms where it's at these days? I miss the pv installation work but not the tedious bureaucracy surrounding it.

I seem to have settled into a nice little sort-of-electrically-biased niche now, with a growing customer base, very little competition and, perhaps most importantly, bugger all goverment interference. Quite the opposite to my old MCS days in fact :coolgleamA:

Hope those of you that managed to stick at it are thriving :waving:

 

[jason121]

We are still busy with the solar, been a good year for us. Started to move away from the Domestic and headed into the medium scale installations. Plenty of roof tops left for all of us. Solar thermal been very slow this year. Heat pumps are steady.

 

[solarsavings]

I'm Back to 6 days a week and Surveys on a Sunday, not good, but while it's there..............

 

[Gavin A]

drowning in inquiries, seem to get a much bigger proportion of complex domestic or large commercial inquiries now than previously, which is a struggle as it's bloody difficult to hire in staff with the level of training and experience needed to cope with that.

 

[whinmoor]

Reasonably busy at the moment. There's been a late summer rush for no apparent reason. Most folk seem to want black panels for sub £6k for 4kWp. Some need considerable education about price v. quality.

The lead generators aren't making anything out of us as we've not had to buy a single lead all year. We still receive several emails a week from various lead generators trying to get us to sign up but it's not going to happen in the near future.

We are seeing a steady trickle of enquiries for repair work as a few installers have disappeared in this area. It's not something we relish tackling as it's like opening a can of worms.

I'm off to China in November to visit a couple of factories which should be enlightening. The flights are booked and my visa arrived yesterday. :shades_smile:

 

[SolarCity]

We've been stupidly busy. But PV only makes up a part of what we've been doing.

 

[whinmoor]

We are seeing a steady trickle of enquiries for repair work as a few installers have disappeared in this area.

By the way, Dansk if you're still about, I went for lunch a few weeks ago at Chaplins Cafe in Normanton which is located below the offices of "Solar Worldwide Ltd" who I believe are no longer trading from that address. I sneaked a look around the corner and there was a pile of mail on the mat addressed to the PV outfit. Amongst the junk mail, I could see letters from HMRC and a few from what looked like legal firms....

 

[whinmoor]

I might as well put a couple of snaps up for the record as I took them. It wasn't the most glamorous of dining venues but the jacket potato was just about acceptable...

I did take close-ups of the names on the envelopes but won't post them on here.

 

[dansk]

What a surprise! to be honest seeing that makes my blood boil knowing they ripped off so many customers and got away like usual.

I like/d the repair work, it's right up my street fault finding, these days I don't touch solar, but lurk in the heating world often trouble shooting UFH installations which is nearly always a electrical problem.

Glad all is going well for you lads.