M
Megavolt
What has it been cut to now.
S
Somecamel
I've been buying Nobles at £115 per panel (46ppw).
Care to share what you've been offered? I'm thinking mid 30's?
Care to share what you've been offered? I'm thinking mid 30's?
Worchester you seem very confident in the market , I know renewables has a long term future but only once every one as forgot about the 43p's etc .
i can see how people will pick up the phone and call you unless your spending an arm n a leg for one led .... which is a mistake I have made in the passed
i can see how people will pick up the phone and call you unless your spending an arm n a leg for one led .... which is a mistake I have made in the passed
Round here, we've already educated then to forget about 43p. Today it is actually a better investment than when it was 43p. - You could do twice as many things with the money for the same return - and that the key, it acually frees up more capital to invest in other areas.
Maybe it's my customer profile, they are all AB's and without exception they all own or have owned their own businesses. I guess not your average customer
Our marketing is incredibly highly targetted, just at that profile.
Maybe it's my customer profile, they are all AB's and without exception they all own or have owned their own businesses. I guess not your average customer
Our marketing is incredibly highly targetted, just at that profile.
S
SRE
I don't think the cut is going to make a huge difference this time but the darker days and colder weather will. It's naturally a seasonal business, why would you spend cash now to generate very little until Feb next year, you're better keeping your cash in the bank. I'll be spending the next few months doing what Worcester has done and identify target audience and plan cheap marketing for next year - at the same time as keeping my fingers crossed very tightly!!
as an installer we all know that today deal is as good as the 43.3 days .... but how does joe bloggs know this ? with out spending an arm and a leg to tell him .... the customer as more chance of going on a compare site and getting stupid low quotes.
in my eyes you need to be selling a 4 kwp at around the 6250 - 6500 to make any profit ......
and buying the kit for around 3100 top side , so how people are selling at 5250 even buying at 3100
5250
minus 3100 D.C and A.C
plus the vat on the 3100 thats 3720
5250 - 3720 = 1530
Scaffold = £450
Labour = 400
ads = 200
thats 480 profit not including the long list of other over heads ...........
then your vat back later so your working to get your vat back ?
there not much in solar pv now sor the amount of work involed and paper work , efforts to get sales , calls , emails etc etc its ok when your making 3 k a job but them days are long gone
thats the basics
in my eyes you need to be selling a 4 kwp at around the 6250 - 6500 to make any profit ......
and buying the kit for around 3100 top side , so how people are selling at 5250 even buying at 3100
5250
minus 3100 D.C and A.C
plus the vat on the 3100 thats 3720
5250 - 3720 = 1530
Scaffold = £450
Labour = 400
ads = 200
thats 480 profit not including the long list of other over heads ...........
then your vat back later so your working to get your vat back ?
there not much in solar pv now sor the amount of work involed and paper work , efforts to get sales , calls , emails etc etc its ok when your making 3 k a job but them days are long gone
thats the basics
S
Somecamel
For a full Install of a basic 4kw system including everything down to Scaff and an extra man on the ground it costs me £4027 ex VAT. Selling for £6457 ex VAT.
We're doing £5495 for a 3.9kWp value system of jetion poly and Samil, £6250 for a 3.9kW hyundai & power-one system, and a fair amount more for Panasonic.
We'll bring around 2k from that into the company in wages and nominal profit margins (from which we have to pay our monthly bills), vs around £3-4k per job last year.
These are the sort of levels I see prices bottoming out at anyway, so we may as well go and pick up work at these levels instead of being undercut and not getting any work.
At these sort of prices the returns are up to around 12-14% again, and I can't see the market staying so crap if we can genuinely be offering those sorts of returns, so I'm willing to do what's needed to stimulate the market as ultimately we can't survive on 4-5 jobs a month even if we did add £1k to that price.
I reckon that we're now going to have 9 months with no FIT cut to worry about, so it's time to set your pricing and stimulate the market for solar PV to build up for a busy spring and summer IMO. We're going to have to work at it as an industry, but if we do, then there's no reason we can't be doing well again come the spring IMO.
We'll bring around 2k from that into the company in wages and nominal profit margins (from which we have to pay our monthly bills), vs around £3-4k per job last year.
These are the sort of levels I see prices bottoming out at anyway, so we may as well go and pick up work at these levels instead of being undercut and not getting any work.
At these sort of prices the returns are up to around 12-14% again, and I can't see the market staying so crap if we can genuinely be offering those sorts of returns, so I'm willing to do what's needed to stimulate the market as ultimately we can't survive on 4-5 jobs a month even if we did add £1k to that price.
I reckon that we're now going to have 9 months with no FIT cut to worry about, so it's time to set your pricing and stimulate the market for solar PV to build up for a busy spring and summer IMO. We're going to have to work at it as an industry, but if we do, then there's no reason we can't be doing well again come the spring IMO.
S
SRE
I agree with most of what you're saying Gavin - it's working towards the Spring now and being clever with marketing that will keep everyone with the cash to get to the spring going BUT I can't sell at those prices, I'd be making a loss unless I could do a job a day and there's just not the market to allow a job a day, especially taking into account the dire winter we're facing. The govt only allows no cuts in Fit for 6 months so there's no guarantee that we'll have 9 months of no cuts but if there's a small cut in 6 months it may stimulate the market a bit, so not necessarily a bad thing.
Yesterday I saw panels at 35p, that's got to be an oversupply issue, once those panels have gone I think prices will increase slightly as they match supply and demand.
Is anyone backing the solar marketing campaign???
it's definitely 9 months, it's a maximum of 2 degression points in a row with no cut, which means 9 months between the november cut and the next cut (assuming the market doesn't double in size over winter).
Those prices are best case scenario, so anything over 25 miles from us is extra, anything needing different more complex scaffolding is extra 2 roof faces are extra etc.
We've had to go through our costs and really cut them where we can to get to that point, but I think something around that point is going to be where the market price bottoms out at, so I prefer to be proactive about getting to the point where we can make that work for us.... although it does rely on us getting a fair amount of additional work in from it to make up for the lower mark ups per installation.
One other thing I'm bearing in mind here is that last year we were needing to build up money in order to pay for new tools, office furniture, office equipment, vans, and training etc which we don't need to do as we should be pretty much ok on that front for at least the next 6-12 months unless things start to seriously pick up.
Those prices are best case scenario, so anything over 25 miles from us is extra, anything needing different more complex scaffolding is extra 2 roof faces are extra etc.
We've had to go through our costs and really cut them where we can to get to that point, but I think something around that point is going to be where the market price bottoms out at, so I prefer to be proactive about getting to the point where we can make that work for us.... although it does rely on us getting a fair amount of additional work in from it to make up for the lower mark ups per installation.
One other thing I'm bearing in mind here is that last year we were needing to build up money in order to pay for new tools, office furniture, office equipment, vans, and training etc which we don't need to do as we should be pretty much ok on that front for at least the next 6-12 months unless things start to seriously pick up.
I agree on the prices going up thing, which is a message I think we in the industry need to be getting across to the public as I think there's a lot of people potentially waiting for the market to bottom out. Essentially what I'm aiming to do is to bottom that market price out earlier, and say this is the price for the next 9 months, and we doubt it's going to get any better than it is now, and prices are more likely to increase than decrease over the next year or so once the over supply in the market ends (one way or another).
S
SRE
Well the nine months could be good news at least we'd have a bit of stability and maybe I need to sharpen my pencil again for costs. I'm just not keen on a base price + extras pricing policy but I know our one price for all isn't going to work now either so time for a fresh approach I think!
It's not that we're using that price to then add in loads of extras to it, that is the standard price for a standard 2 storey single roof house.
Feedback we've had is that people like our open pricing policy, they like to be able to work out pretty much what it's going to cost in advance, and it's also good for winning work from the rip off companies, as someone who's had a rip off quote can then easily find your pricing and see how much they were being ripped off (we've recently had a job off a company wanting £12k for a 3kW installation).
Feedback we've had is that people like our open pricing policy, they like to be able to work out pretty much what it's going to cost in advance, and it's also good for winning work from the rip off companies, as someone who's had a rip off quote can then easily find your pricing and see how much they were being ripped off (we've recently had a job off a company wanting £12k for a 3kW installation).
S
SRE
Sorry didn't mean to imply that's what you were doing but in a previous job where there were loads of price permutations we found the customer really liked a single price with no extras and on the basis of swings and roundabouts this has worked well for us in the past. Of course it's a different market now, do you just work on a price list of extras so you can still quote the same day? So extra for twin mppt, 2 orientations, landscape fixing rather than portrait, slate rather than tiled, garage consumer, swa, monitoring etc etc??
I was offered modules @ 38pw for silver framed and black @ 39pw last week and thought that good but 35p?
We still do full quotes for each job, but having standard pricing should speed that process up, and will mean our surveyors will be able to leave the customer with a good idea of the price.
I may rethink the idea of actually using the quote pads though, but I do like the fact that we take the time to design the system properly.
One of the extras we offer is a price for changing inverter to SMA for example, so the customer can choose to outlay that extra money if they want to, and can actually see the price difference they're paying for the brand and bluetooth.
I may rethink the idea of actually using the quote pads though, but I do like the fact that we take the time to design the system properly.
One of the extras we offer is a price for changing inverter to SMA for example, so the customer can choose to outlay that extra money if they want to, and can actually see the price difference they're paying for the brand and bluetooth.
that's better than we've found, but I am partly pricing on the basis that I expect the low end panels to end up around that sort of price from Nov onwards. Not that that's a huge amount different.
we're doing a stand at the home building and renovation show in harrogate this weekend, and after 2 days, with 1 to go, we now have 25 fairly firm leads, so probably 35 by the end of tomorrow, and we've probably given away leaflets to another hundred or so people.
And then on Wednesday we're doing a FIT for Farming event in association with the NFU, at which we now have confirmed meetings booked in with around 25 farmers all of whom have requested a meeting with us because they're seriously considering a solar PV installation.
Total cost of attending both events will be around £4k, plus around £200 for printed marketing material, plus staff time.
In summary, there is still demand out there, but you have to go looking for it in the right places.... also, it looks like I'm going to be having a busy few weeks on the site surveys and quotes front.
And then on Wednesday we're doing a FIT for Farming event in association with the NFU, at which we now have confirmed meetings booked in with around 25 farmers all of whom have requested a meeting with us because they're seriously considering a solar PV installation.
Total cost of attending both events will be around £4k, plus around £200 for printed marketing material, plus staff time.
In summary, there is still demand out there, but you have to go looking for it in the right places.... also, it looks like I'm going to be having a busy few weeks on the site surveys and quotes front.
I think the scores on the doors were 35 firm inquiries, probably about half for new build which will be trickled in across the year, and half for retrofit, which should mostly be over the next few months. Probably 5-10 of those were for renewable heat despite us not really having much in the way of renewable heat stuff out there.
We even had the staff of one of our bigger local competitors who're more heat pump specialists referring one of the other exhibitors to us for a solar inquiry because they said we knew what we were talking about and would give them a better job.
We've also had 2 inquiries on the website over the weekend probably from the show, so I'm now a lot more confident about our future, and the future of the industry in general.
We even had the staff of one of our bigger local competitors who're more heat pump specialists referring one of the other exhibitors to us for a solar inquiry because they said we knew what we were talking about and would give them a better job.
We've also had 2 inquiries on the website over the weekend probably from the show, so I'm now a lot more confident about our future, and the future of the industry in general.
OFFICIAL SPONSORS
These Official Forum Sponsors May Provide Discounts to Regular Forum Members - If you would like to sponsor us then CLICK HERE and post a thread with who you are, and we'll send you some stats etc
Advert
Thread starter
Eco Deal
-
Thread Information
Advert
Advert
TrueNAS JBOD Storage Server
-
-
-
Understanding TrueNAS JBOD Servers: A Comprehensive Guide- Started by Dan
- Replies: 8