Installations since April

[Princesolar]

Interesting to see the amount of Installations since April. What do you think will happen to the market in August with the proposed 20 year tariff at 16p?
How long can the market continue to survive on these cuts,and do you think that panel prices will continue to fall or have they now hit there low? Would be interesting to get some views of what you all think.




DONT KILL OUR SOLAR INDUSTRY OR IS IT TO LATE?

 

[SRE]

It's killing most of my business before August. I'm losing 70% of my work because we can't hit the D rating. It's not pv price that's the issue these are rural properties where pv would be a real benefit, but spending another 10k on insulating solid walls or 3-4k on replacing a 10 year old oil boiler just blow the pv cost out of the water.

 

[Worcester]

@SRE this might sound silly here, perhaps that's were the green deal MIGHT help (of course not till this time next year though ) they could put their boiler on the green deal and buy the PV...

 

[Noshocks]

@SRE this might sound silly here, perhaps that's were the green deal MIGHT help (of course not till this time next year though ) they could put their boiler on the green deal and buy the PV...

Have you seen the interest rates being touted around, spending money on something that will pay back wihin a relativly short time is one thing, borrowing money is another, i dont think the general public have the appetite for debt at the moment, its gone from one exptreme to the other. I cant see the green deal being exploited fully for two or three years.

 

[Earthstore]

I believe The Green Deal will be exploited, but sadly for all the wrong reasons.
It is an open opportunity for gross misselling, which I am sure will be exploited by some.

 

[Worcester]

You can pay the green deal loan off at any time you want ...

 

[Noshocks]

You can pay the green deal loan off at any time you want ...

But you still have to want to borrow money in the first place, the only people i see borowing money at the moment are chavs from 'quickquid' and exchanging TV's for cash at 'crackconverters', the only sure fire winner in this climate is Pawn and ****.

 

[SRE]

Thing is that most of our customers don't see the need to replace a 10 year old boiler and you can't really blame them, if it was 15 year old you could maybe make an argument. One of our customers had a 9 year old boiler that was running at 97% efficiency according to the reading taken on it's regular service. They'd paid for something decent when they installed it - their reasoning is why spend more when the efficiency of the boiler is better than it should be for it's age.

At the minute all of our local plumbers have loads fo work so why would they engage with the Gren Deal which screws them on price and opens them up to competition they didn't previously have. If we don't go down the local installers it opens the door for the big guys and I can see the same happening for windows too.

As for the insulation industry, I'm not entirely convinced that the guys laying the loft insulation will have the skills for external wall insulation - but I could be wrong ..... tough times!

 

[Gavin A]

97% efficiency?

possibly it's running at 97% of its original rated efficiency, but definitely not actually at 97% efficiency.

 

[SRE]

Yea you're probably right they'd used a telegan machine but who knows how accurate it is. It was a decent boiler though ( I have similar but it's 7 year old.) If someone knocked on my door and told me I'd need to change the boiler to get pv I'd tell them where to go, oil boilers will happily chug away without any hassle for 20 years.

Even though I've been in the energy efficiency industry for years I still question whether changing a boiler at the 10 - 15 year point is as carbon efficient as it could be. The embodied carbon in the new boiler and it's travelling time is ofset against the carbon saved from a new boiler. At the time I left there wasn't any info about this sort but I'm sure it must have moved on since then. If I know that solar pv has approx 2 years embodied energy and insulation is the same then I guess maybe the boiler might be in the same region??? But if the drop in efficiency is relatively low because it's been looked after then the 10 = 15 year peropd needs to be re-evaluated.

 

[moggy1968]

absolutely, it's like the shambles of the scrappage scheme. It's totally un ecological to scrap a perfectly serviceable boiler to put in a new one. Any efficiencies achieved are totally outweighed by the scrapping of the old one and manufacturing of the new one.
Appliances should only be replaced for more efficient ones at the end of their serviceable life.