So the Labour government has announced its ´new Warm home plan´, being brought in to replace the recently axed ECO4 scheme as part an attempt to quicken the take-up for energy saving home improvements in the UK, whilst delivering higher standards of work and advice than homeowners were getting under the old ECO4 model, which had resulted in 98% of scheme participants receiving sub-standard work and ending up being thoroughly dissatisfied with their experience (thats 98% worse than we have at Ecotekk, so when we tell people that have qualified for free solar panels that difference in standards between us and one of the free companies is night and day -well that is absolutely the case!).
The new scheme promises to deliver £15 billion pounds in low-interest loans, with the possibility of cash grants to the poorest households. Aside from the main purposes of the plan of lowering household energy bills and meeting national and international climate obligations, an explicit aim of the new scheme is to tackle the so-called solar cowboys, which of course will be the best thing ever, though we wonder how in practice they will achieve this considering that ECO 4 itself would in theory have been highly regulated -as in there would have been hundreds and hundreds of pages of scheme requirements, but in practice unscrupulous operators would do their best possible work for an assessment, and after gaining accreditation brake every rule in the book thereafter. Of course any serious effort by the government in this direction is warmly welcomed by us, I know personally how irritated I feel if Im out with the canvassers, and someone on the doorstep claims that they were interested in solar, but say that so and sons had it and had nothing but trouble; wasn’t worth it, etc. Upon digging a bit further, when it can be reasonably established, probably around 80% of the horror stories concerned free solar PV installations, but we do unfortunately come across many people who’ve been misled by an unscrupulous installer, or sold kit that was less than ideal by an electrician or some larger company that had some relationship with a particular brand. How often do we see arrays split unnecessarily?- which means customers pay more money for less power. Or an array which would generate 20% more power just by being moved across to the other side of the roof, or more towards its apex? How many times have we seen the cheapest solar panels available, sold as premium kit? And thats to say nothing of all the people who, sadly, have been left with a system which scarcely generates any power at all, and they cant get hold of the company who installed them to come out and fix it.
Our verdict: Underwhelming and uninspired. Generally we would agree that anything which -subject to caveats safeguarding quality covering all aspects of the process- enhances the take up of technology that, correctly sold and properly installed, helps people to live greener and more prosperous lives, must be a good thing. Ultimately though, we feel this is more hot air than anything else. Low interest loans are all well and good, but I remember sitting in a meeting in the hospitality section of the Cardiff City stadium years ago, when Ministers were holding discussions with key industry stakeholders concerning the decimation and eventual run-down of the extremely popular FIT scheme, and its replacement with the ´Green Deal´ -which they promised all the industry people was an improvement and a massive opportunity, but to everyone facing the front of the meeting room that day, well it all sounded a bit shit.
The actual interest ratest of the Green Deal loans was probably not announced to us that day (I cant exactly remember), but it turned out to be 7.9%! Ecotekk are already offering finance from just 7.3% – so the likelihood is that for all the fanfare, there’s better financing available for solar panels, batteries and heatpumps right now, than its likely that the government will be offering people in its highly trumpeted rehash of the same tried and failed programmes of 15 years or so ago.
In fact, as a business we may even see a very small drop of finance sales, because there might be the odd customer at the margin who, despite being able to finance his solar with us for just 7.3%, instead waits for the government low interest scheme in the hope of maybe being offered a rate of 6 or 7% under the forthcoming plan.
I recall a prospective customer I went to see 2 years ago, and basically his excuse for indefinitely deterring something which objectively it was in his interests to do straight away, was that he wanted to see if the incoming government was going to start putting solar in free for people. I told him that was already the case for low income households (as it was then), but he could imagine the quality of work done when the installers got their money from the government as soon as the householder signed a completion note. I showed him that with an unsecured loan over 10 years, his system would pay for itself and leave money over for other purchases, and he´d be immediately better off, not just at some hypothetical date in the future, because the savings through the reduced bills exceeded the annual repayments on the loan. I even said to him that even if a scheme were announced, it would be a year or 2 after that it would take effect, which when you´re spending 2 grand a year plus on your electricity bills, amounts to thousands of pounds gone forever, all for future prospect of maybe saving 1 or 2 % on the cost of the loan. But often people arent logical about these things -hell, if they were, there’d be no-one left to sell panels to at this point, coz everyone would have them already
So if you were considering getting a solar PV installation for your home, its worth considering that someone who puts off a solar job for another year or 2 as a result of this announcement, could well be 3, 4 , 5 or even 6 grand down in lower bills and lost export revenue -money they will never get back -so it definitely make far more sense to just finance your Solar PV installation with Ecotekk now, rather than miss out on all that wasted energy in the -almost certainly- vain hope of saving a 1 or 2% in interest.
So stop wasting time and money dreaming about government handouts delivered by white belt installers. Give Ecotekk a call today and speak to the real Solar PV experts. It what all savvy solar PV customers are doing.
*originally posted earlier in the year, prior to our website being attacked.