You may have read Finn’s original ‘7-mistakes’ article, followed by ex WA-installer Kim’s take and SA Installer Chris’s version. Now here are the biggest mistakes I’ve seen people make buying solar during my years on and off the roofs of South Australia:
Mistake #1) Not Asking This Question
The only thing shonky installers hate more than a Clean Energy Regulator enforcable undertaking is a customer who has some notes. With knowledge comes power, and if a shonky installer realises that you have questions that need answers, they’ll have to behave. In fact, if you really want to scare them, refer to yourself as a “retired engineer”.
One of the BEST questions to ask is :
“Have you ever processed a warranty claim?”
- Was it timely?
- Was the manufacturer support good?
- Did they pay an appropriate amount for time, travel and labour to complete a product changeover?
How an installer answers this question will quickly reveal their attitude to warranty service and long-term customer support. You are looking for someone who has a proven record of looking after their customer when things go wrong.
A particularly talented salesperson could always lie of course. So always, always, always independently verify information, whenever possible. There are numerous resources available to help you verify what solar salesmen tell you, such as the big fat SolarQuotes search box on this page and the Clean Energy Council (bearing in mind that the “approved solar retailer” endorsement is considered a pay-for-play industry joke).
The Whirlpool forums are also one of my favourite sources of such information, but if Google can’t help you, I will. Just shoot me an email here with the subject ‘Ask Anthony’.
Mistake #2) Putting Off Buying Solar Because… ummm…
I’ve heard so many people give (non)reasons for not buying a solar power system:
- technology
- incentive
- price
- pessimism
Once upon a time, it was because Origin Energy was working on these new sliver cells and they were going to be a game changer. Maybe the exchange rate was moving. New panels will be better. And the perennial suspicion about State/Federal governments will/won’t soon offer more/less money and the Lib/Lab government would soon impose penalties/taxes.
Even this week I’ve seen people asserting:
- “solar is a scam”
- “there’s no feed-in tariff”
- “they will me rip me off”
Which is depressing to hear in a forum of electricians. Apparently, fossil-fueled Stockholm syndrome isn’t just a disease of coal miners.
The fact is every day solar energy pours onto your roof. Harnessing it is simple, and it will make a difference from day one, no matter what season.
It’s like planting a tree – there have been good seasons and great ones, but the best time to plant a tree was 10 years ago.
Mistake #3) Buying Solely On Price
Whether it’s reassuringly expensive or incredibly cheap, offered by door knockers or dissipated sports stars, don’t sign on the first dotted line you can find. You’ll likely get exactly the same chintzy hardware installed by carefree subcontractors with no documentation or support.
It pains me that so many Australians are taken in by these shonks and that with some 600,000 orphaned systems, so many have “gone bust” and then phoenixed their way out of warranty obligations.
A solar phoenix
When NSW Fair Trading found one prominent operator doing the wrong thing, they were threatened with a loss of contracting licence. This mob had the chutzpah to say they all their customers would lose warranty support if they could no longer install. It was audacious, but I guess they were fighting for all those customers who could soon give them a one-star review.
Mistake #4) Misunderstanding Solar Energy Savings
Confusing the incentive of low bills.
The main benefit of solar power is never printed on your bill. In fact, it’s almost invisible (unless you have monitoring) but bear with me while I explain.
For a hundred years the electricity industry has been pretty feudal. The kings generated the power, the knights distributed it and we peasants had no choice but to accept our lot and pay. Through the nose usually.
Happily, the revolution is upon us. We’ve erected a guillotine in the public square and there’s a sharpened solar panel slicing the heads off electricity bills every day. Vive la révolution
Democracy has come to electricity because there is now some choice of where your energy comes from. At every sunrise, you have the power to be an intelligent prosumer instead of a passive consumer.
The real incentive solar power offers you is to take an interest, to change your behaviour and save money simply by being more efficient. Monitoring apps really help here.
With electricity generated on your roof, powering your stuff, it literally gives you the power, and your retailer never knew it happened so they can’t put it on the bill. That’s why it’s very real to you, but as far as the retailer is concerned, you’ve (almost) vanished.
Mistake #5) Confusing The Solar Incentives.
Isn’t there a rebate? Aren’t they going to send us cheques instead of bills?
Every year there are frantic marketing claims made about “getting in before the rebates drop” which is a pressure sales half-truth. Put simply, the federal government incentive does fall marginally every year but generally so does the price of solar.
The Nationwide Rebate
When you buy a solar power system, there are still thousands of dollars on offer, but it’s not the federal treasury providing a subsidy, rather Australia’s 200 biggest polluters are obliged to shell out. Roughly speaking they buy the glass panels for you to put on your roof, while you pay for the rest of the system.
Your Local Feed-In Tariff
The state-level incentives are generally feed-in tariffs. Years ago there were long-lived, rolled gold rates of 40 to 60 cents per kilowatt-hour offered for the electricity you exported. It was a perverse incentive, but it helped establish an industry using early adopters who were willing to pay ten times the price for this new technology. Those are the customers who had the money to spend up big (and have received fat cheques), but they’re largely a thing of the past.
Some states now put a floor price of about 6 cents per kilowatt hour and they “encourage” the retailers to top that up with a competitive rate to attract customers. Retailers might offer 10 cents or offer nothing, so depending on your electricity plan, you could export three, six or eight kilowatt hours in order to get one back for free after sunset.
Low feed-in-tariffs are depressing, but with a few smarts applied, you can often shift a lot of would-be exported solar energy to self-consumed solar electricity by shifting consumption and converting from gas to electric. And of course, a home battery (or home battery on wheels) is a great way to soak up excess daytime solar power.
Mistake #6) Not Understanding Your Warranties
Breaking News: the sky is blue and salesmen fly about telling porky pies. While you might find that hard to fathom, I can personally vouch that a saleswoman lied to me about solar last week. I guess it serves me right for lying about being a potential customer.
To be honest it was a minor detail, but even the most reputable people can sometimes resort to hyperbole or a little fear-mongering.
Good thing is that a new solar system quote now comes with a detailed graph showing what the electricity yield will be and a detailed calculation for return on investment. If your salesperson can’t explain these things properly or scrawls them on the back of an envelope before pushing a contract at you, it’s your turn to push them out the door.
The warranty on solar has become a little bit ridiculous so it’s worth taking some time to understand.
Firstly, be aware that “tier 1” solar panels aren’t necessarily the best quality, that little piece of industry jargon is actually an indication of how healthy the accountants think the company is. Think of “tier 1” as an indication as to whether the manufacturer will be around to honour the warranty. Maybe.
Solar panels are long-lived and panel manufacturers have been trying to differentiate themselves with warranties, moving from 20 to 25 years (and in some cases, even 40 year performance warranties are on offer). Who is actually going to be around to honour them we don’t know.
Performance (or speed of degradation if you’re a pessimist) was generally 90% at ten years and 80% at twenty or twenty-five years. Some makers have closed this up with higher thresholds at decreased times, perhaps 95% at 7.5 years, 90% at 12.5 years and 85% at 15 years, along with other electrical jargon or claims about how they are so tough they literally have balls of steel.
If you’re within 200 metres of the coast, make sure they don’t have an out clause for corrosion damage.
A dishonest salesman will try to infer that the headline “performance warranty” will cover anything that goes wrong, while the fine print says that the panel warranty could be as little as 5 years.
Your quote must have panel details and a local website with an onshore phone number for support. Warranty is worthless if they expect you to post the panels back overseas for testing. Be aware that some donkeys will quote a system they never intend to deliver. You’ll find installers on the day have a substitute panel or inverter and if challenged, a paltry compensation payment to justify swapping brands or models.
Maintenance plans aren’t required to maintain warranty. An annual clean might be prudent, especially in a bushfire zone, but if anyone walks on the glass or points a pressure washer at your panels, they should be thrown from the roof.
As an experienced installer and fault finder, I really recommend a qualified electrician does a service every 5 years. In fact, many electricity network providers make it a requirement. It’s hardly enforced but when you sign up for a solar connection to the grid, you’re agreeing with the network operator to keep your equipment in order (see an example here).
In reality, there are actually four separate warranties you get when you buy your solar power system – the ‘performance warranty’ being one of them. The other three are for your inverter, the panels themselves, and the workmanship. In terms of warranty, what you really want to look for is:
Mistake #7) Not Knowing What Size System Is Right For You
This mistake is getting easier to solve. These days the CEC obliges solar installers to offer written quotes with detailed information. Reputable installers will sit you down and do a full analysis of your electricity usage habits before they provide you with a quote.
They will ask you what your financial goals are, how much you’re willing to spend in order to accomplish those goals, and whether you plan to get an electric car soon – because it’s not as simple as purchasing a solar power system size that matches your energy usage right now.
Despite the hype about solar battery storage, any honest solar installer will give you the same advice: Batteries will not pay for themselves at the speed solar power does.
An unsubsidised Tesla Powerwall battery system will currently cost you at least $16,000 to install and using typical, current tariffs will take about 15 years to pay back. The unit is warranted to last 10 years. Right now the numbers only stack up if there’s a special use case, like blackout protection that saves your aquarium full of expensive pet fish from dying. You’ll have to do the maths on that personally.
However… the figures for 15 years’ payback are going to improve radically if the retail contracts I’ve seen in the last few days are anything to go by.
If you receive 6 cents of credit for energy exported but have to pay 80 cents for the same energy imported between 3pm & 1am… storage saves you 74 cents per unit.
If a 10 kWh battery is appropriate for your house, you drain the battery every evening, and you get forced onto one of these horrible plans, that’s a back-of-the-envelope saving of over $7 every night or $2700 every year. Maybe the long-awaited battery boom is about to happen.
Batteries aren’t the be-all and end-all. I wouldn’t recommend you join a virtual power plant to get rich quick, but there are great use cases. For instance, Emma my favourite catering queen with a commercial kitchen in her garden could easily justify $30,000 spent on solar and battery storage. Why? it’ll pay for itself as soon as the next prolonged power cut hits by keeping $30,000 in food stock refrigerated.
My own maxim is this: after 14+ years I have never met a customer who has complained that they installed too much solar. So if you have money in the bank or down the back of the couch, it’s probably better bolted to the roof.
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