MCS inspection

[SolarCity]

Just had ours and we've had a couple of things highlighted.

First of all, I need to refresher training. No idea why this should be. I do the job every day so I can't see why I need to pay out more money and lose another day. If I can't do my job properly, then surely this would show up during the annual inspection which I'm forced to pay for.

Lastly, use of MCS calculation method. I had a SERIOUS issue with this and I'm challenging it as much as I can. We use and rely on PV*Sol Expert calculations. We have data showing that it is incredibly accurate and we spend a lot of time getting our shading measurements as accurate as possible. In the early days of the introduction of the MCS method, we supplied both calculations. Now, all this did was confuse our customers - and understandably so. When asked what the difference was between the two, we couldn't explain that our PV*Sol method was demonstrably better as our MCS guidelines demanded that we couldn't. So this leaves us with the ludicrous situation of having to claim that our own method is not as good as the MCS method. Not only is this clearly not true (and we had six months of data to show this fact), but it just confused matters.

So we stopped doing it. We didn't do it to mislead customers. In fact, as anyone using both methods will I'm sure agree, the PV*sol calculated yield was generally lower than the MCS method.

I asked the question: "For whose benefit is it for us to dumb down our calculation method? The customer, or ourselves?" Frankly, the answer to that question is clearly neither. And if that is the case, then why the hell am I being asked to stop doing it? It's a restriction on our company in an area where I feel we excel and it makes me pretty angry, to say the least.

I still go to see customers who have been lied to time and time again. Why haven't the MCS stopped these people? Why are they picking us up on ludicrous things like this while we watch other firms not only get by but actually thrive?

If our MCS inspector actually sat with me while I showed him this instead of spending time looking through a pointless time-drain like the QMS document, we could prove this to be the case.

The MCS is, and always has been, a burden on the industry.

 

[solarsavings]

First of all, I need to refresher training.

Someone else mentioned that on another forum recently and I didn't think it would apply to the likes of us, if it does, it's crazy. Mine inspection is due next month so I will let you know what they say then.

By the way, I've just received my recc certificate in the post, I'm glad they keep on top of their paperwork.

 

[Gavin A]

I'm about to get on the case with MCS with the performance estimation stuff again to see if we can get this resolved to allow for the more accurate methods to be used instead, and the MCS method to be a minimum standard for those who can't be arsed with anything else.

fwiw we haven't adopted the official method, and have simply handed my report on why it's wrong from a few years ago to the inspector and they've so far managed to turn a blind eye to us using a more accurate method instead that has the same basic data source.

 

[whinmoor]

We've just been given our inspection details for 2017. I'm sure I'd heard the name of the Assessor before (it's quite distinctive and unusual) and it turns out that he's a Director of a PV installation company not too far away which seems to still be trading. Isn't this a conflict of interests? We could easily have competed with his company for jobs.

I've never had any direct dealings with this guy and he's certainly been in the PV industry for a fair while. I also don't blame him for doing additional work as a sideline but I'm not sure why I should show our quotes and index of contracts etc to a possible competitor.

Any thoughts?

 

[solarsavings]

Yes. But none of them printable on this forum @#**@#

 

[Gavin A]

Who is it?

Yes that sounds like a serious conflict of interest if they are still trading.

 

[whinmoor]

Who is it?

Yes that sounds like a serious conflict of interest if they are still trading.

I want to do a bit more digging before saying but his first name and surname both begin with the same letter (i.e. "Donald Duck" or "Mickey Mouse"). You can check your records for previous inspectors to see if any have such names?

His company is still active on the MCS register (and RECC) and he appears to be the sole Director listed at Companies House. If I do a search on the MCS database on my postcode (and Gavin's), his company appears amongst the hits. The 500th company is only 62 miles away from my postcode.

I don't object to having someone who knows about PV coming to do our assessment. I'm sure he's a perfectly nice chap and we'd get along fine in a different situation (e.g. if we happened to sit next to each other at a training workshop). However, if he's still active in the industry, I'd rather he was based at least 100 miles away (which pretty much means south of Birmingham or in Scotland or Wales) before getting selected to rummage through our records.

He could certainly give us a hard time with all this new training and competency stuff that's coming up and could cost us a small fortune by forcing us to go on pointless courses and expecting us to have expensive copies of published literature that's completely irrelevant to what we normally do.

 

[solarsavings]

I would not allow a competitor to inspect my business and wouldn't waste anytime in telling my registration body.

That's my polite answer

 

[whinmoor]

I've discussed this informally with a few people and they all reckon its out of order.

I had a tricky phone call today with NAPIT to come to a resolution. I told them the integrity of their assessment programme was questionable if they send a Director of a competitor to examine our paperwork.

Their latest suggestion seems to be to split the MCS and CPS assessments using different assessors. I stated that that wasn't ideal as we'd then have 2 days of disruption instead of just 1. It would be ok if they could attend on the same day.

The saga will continue into tomorrow...