Low output until panels in sun thread on public side - how much more to offer?

[The Solar King]

I have pm'd the guy a few times as he is relatively local to me. I now know who the installer is and have had a look at the property on Google Earth.

I suspect he has been well and truely shafted. The company involved are spun out of a laminate flooring stack em high sell it cheap chain. Anecdotally I have heard they are in the cross hairs of REAL. I have not mentioned this to him as I have no substantiation.

The property has trees on more than just the East side.

His difficulty is two fold. Without the system being put right, he cannot know if he would be happy with the performance. I would think this unlikely.

Without full appraisal of the site and accurate survey, potential output will not be known. I doubt if the company involved even has the wherewithall to do this.

If I had been armed with this information as someone quoting for the business, personally I may well have told him not to bother and walked away.

I have serious doubts that a technical fix will solve the issues.

Whilst feeling sorry for the guy, what more can be done? I just hate it when our industry gets dragged down like this.

 

[whinmoor]

I contributed as best I could based on the photos pointing out some possible issues. It might work ok without the shading but probably the surveyor either didn't notice the trees or didn't appreciate how badly they would affect the output. Now they've got his money, I doubt they will put much energy into resolving his performance issues.

It's really a damage-limitation exercise. Best techical solution may be to move some of the panels from the right end to the other side of the solar thermal and some under the thermal. Then possibly use Solar Edge on the lot. But that's gonna cost a fair whack and might look a bit silly.

Could leave the panels where they are and go for an SMA or Power One, perhaps with a 10 + 6 split, and accept that the short string will perform pretty badly? It's going to need re-stringing by someone who knows what they are doing and it sounds like the laminate flooring company may struggle with this.

 

[SRE]

I feel sorry for the guy to a point but tell me this - did he go with the company because they were the cheapest????? Sometimes you reap what you sow.

We'd have said no to this job and explained why or at the very least put a smaller system on with Solaredge and saved the guy some cash - we're about 120 miles south of this and imho to suggest 3180 kwh with that shading is ludicrous. I've just quotes someone with less shading than that 2430 kwh and we're putting solar edge on. I'm confident it will out perform the figures but sap and the shading are indicating those figures.

I'm not sure he quite understands the degree of under performance - it's time people start to understand that getting different quotes doesn't mean you have to go with the cheapest. Unfortunately it's not good publicity for anyone decent in the solar industry - although that number seems to be dropping dramatically again at the moment.

 

[Gavin A]

erm, I've had a slightly tipsy rant along these lines.

I've got some pensioner who's been completely ripped off an left in the lurch by solar energy savings scammers, then hung out to dry by REAL, MCS, OFGEM etc. coming back to me via CAB for assistance recently, and it really ****es me off that they all just pass the buck / don't give a ----.

her system was right next to a chimney on the south side, so shaded virtually all day, had undersized inverter etc. so would always under perform, but due to admin cock ups by solar energy savings, she's also ended up firstly missing out on firstly the 21p FIT rate, and now apparently ending up on the lowest fit rate due to the EPC not being received / lost - despite the EPC on the EPC database having a date of early May 2012.

I'm fuming about this for the old lady, but more so because all our regulators have fobbed her and CAB off and told here there's nowt they can do even about the no EPC side of it.... but then she ain't my customer, so why should I have to waste hours of my time trying to sort it out?

 

[solarsavings]

I said no to a local job because the roof in question had two massive chimneys either side of where the panels would go and a large walnut tree to the south east. I drove past it later to see that solar creations had fitted 8 panels between the stacks. They will be shaded much of the day so not worth the outlay imo. SC has left loads of it's customers in the ****e and yet some how it has managed to change its name on the wreck website while keeping it's original name for napit. It's a bad joke.