new chapter in solar again tomorrow

[Gavin A]

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).

 

[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??

 

[solarsavings]

I was offered modules @ 38pw for silver framed and black @ 39pw last week and thought that good but 35p?

 

[Gavin A]

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.

 

[Gavin A]

I was offered modules @ 38pw for silver framed and black @ 39pw last week and thought that good but 35p?

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.

 

[whinmoor]

People are certainly not in a hurry to sign up. We had a rush of customers sneaking in to catch the 21p rate but the difference between 16p & 15.44p is miniscule.

It's also logical to think that the start of winter isn't the best time to sign up for this kind of product...

 

[Gavin A]

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.

 

[SolarCity]

Good work Gavin, glad to hear that these events have worked out for you.

We have thought about doing this too so it's good to hear that you're getting results.

 

[Gavin A]

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.