A friend of mine had the pleasure of ringing around a few suppliers of solar power systems recently, and she came away with a few little gems from suppliers who had decided to tell her anything they liked, as long as it suited their short term needs).

She was calling people in the Perth area only.

Firstly there was the guy who argued about efficiency figures for a particular inverter. He added 3% to the number, just because it felt good I guess. Eirther this guy didn’t know (and I find this hard to believe), or decided to say whetever filled a gap in his story.

Everyone I talked to has the best panels and inverters.

This is great, but at some point, you have to be able to back your claims up, and most people can’t.  What should the consumer look for? A few things:

• Manufacturer warranty – 10 years is now the industry best;
• Power tolerance – if your proposed panels have a tolerance of + or – 3%, then you don’t know what panel wattage you are getting, so make sure you check it out. Some panels have a -0%, +5% warranty, and so you win every time;
•  Power guarantee – guaranteeing the power output for 25 years is common, but some modules have a better than standard warranty. Industry standard is 80% after 25 years, but look out for 85% power gurantee after 25 years because they are available.

On inverters:

• Go for dual inputs if you have different facing arrays – one input cannot do this;
• Go for efficiency;
• Select a good brand, but;
• Don’t buy based on brand alone.

The best person she called was a font of  information, of sorts.

He started by telling her that rebates were available through a mythical “Department of Renewable Energy”, and that the rebate takes up to two months to process. He also mentioned that they would need council rates notices to help with the “rebate”.

All of this stuff is just untrue. The problem is of course, if someone is willing to lie to people about mythical government departments, can you trust them to tell the truth to you about the work they have done or intend doing?

The answer of course is education – consumers need to educate themselves, or seek good information about solar products and services, and not just go for price.

When your entire decision making process is based only on price, you just get what you pay for. When it is based on price and quality, and specification, you have a much better chance of getting a great deal.

RG