h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well we signed up for one of these free solar panel deals recently.

The idea being, you get solar panels fitted for free and get to use any or all of the electricity generated for free. The deal is that the company fitting them get the feed-in tariff - that is the payment you get from the national grid for any excess.

Trouble is the feed-in tariff if getting halved on the 12 December.

I knew that.

What I didn't know was that existing applications have to be fully fitted and complete by a deadline of the 11th December.

So we have got our pack from ecovision yesterday. So we need to get our roof surveyed (optional but really quite important), get permission from the building society - and I know that includes a new valuation survey to be done, get all the legal dobbly-doo-dah done and *then* get them up and running in only 10 days.

Yeah that's going to happen then

These assessments, surveys, etc, ... are they your cost or that of the company offering the panels? If the costs are yours, and the time is so very short, I'd suggest sadly saying "No, thanks". You might wear a serious load of expenses that take many years to recover

Well I was probably not going to bother with the roof survey, but the valuation thing from the building society I was going to fight anyway - we've already had one done really quite recently so I can't imagine that it would have changed at all.

It would be at our expense yes, but then a valuation survey doesn't cost much anyway and the potential savings on the electricity bill well outweigh the expense.

The real problem is whether the company ecovision will want to bother after December 12th as it is at their end that the problem lies - their income from it for the next 25 years is about to be halved making it not worth their while. Nice one el governmento.

Tell them there's a blizzard to end all blizzards forecast for the 12th and surely they don't want to be climbing on the roof in that?

Huh?

Methinks you misunderstand. The government are changing the law such that it won't be worth the company's while installing these after the 11th. So if there's rain, snow or whatever to stop the installation - tough luck, the law will have changed. Too late.

From my experiencess, neither governments nor companies work that quickly. You may find yourself expending for papers and permits, and the company then rescinds the offer. Because there is nothing really in it for them any more. After you have consumed your measure, they would see so little with the halving, it would take a measure of 'for-ever' for them to recoup the costs of materials and labours.

If I were in that boat, with so little time, I would decline.

Well it seems I've been declined by the company themselves.

The feed in tariff issue is still not finished with and I saw on TV that they were still advertising their free solar panels offer.

So I contacted them and it seems they'd aborted the deal from their end.

The reason? We have a difficult lender it seems.

I guess indeed we do - as mentioned our lender requires us to appoint lawyers (from *their* approve pool) to satisfy quite a long list of their requirements also we have to have the place revalued taking into account the affect the panels have on the house value.

Anyway, the upshot is, ecovision themselves told us not to bother - so we won't.

Yeah thanks My Building Society - glad to see you've got the environment in mind