Solar panel bonus

[watervole]

 When we had our solar panels installed, the deal was that we paid £5 a month and got all the electricity that we were able to use from the panels and Homesun got the feed in tariff and the £5.

I got a letter today saying that they'll be cancelling our monthly direct debit so we now get the panels for free, but they'll still maintain the panels for the agreed 25 year period.

I'm happy, but puzzled.  (and concerned that there's a catch somewhere.)

Either they hope to sell us some other service in the future and are being terribly nice to us (which is a sound tactic, but I'm not sure what they expect to sell us) or there is some other reason.

What kind of commercial sense does it make to turn down £60  a year for the next 24 years?

Answers on a postcard.....

Comments

[dumain.com (from livejournal.com)]

Possibly they don't want to be caught giving existing customers a worse deal than new customers which tends to be bad PR.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

That is roughly what I was thinking...

[eledonecirrhosa.livejournal.com]

Aren't there all sorts of government and council grants to companies for installing solar panels? Perhaps they are now getting the £60 from someone else?

[rockwell-666.livejournal.com]

Possibly this has some relevance:

"Aviva snaps up HomeSun’s domestic solar portfolio in £100m deal

"Aviva Investors confirms acquisition of 23MW of feed-in tariff-backed residential solar panels"

http://tinyurl.com/og6ymqy

[watervole.livejournal.com]

I wondered about that - but that was a year ago.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Except that feedin tariffs are now lower, so new customers will get a worse deal.

[johnrw.livejournal.com]

Solar systems have benefited from process engineering to the extent that panel costs are below £1 per peak watt produced, the switch to miniinverter tech (each panel has it's own dedicated inverter - resulting in an approximate 15 -20% efficiency gain for an array).

The costs of installation are still high, but competition is continuing to keep a lid on it - sort of.

The feed in tariff on 'your' solar panels reflects this earlier higher cost and remains higher than new entrant.

The new owner of the domestic portfolio (Aviva) is retaining Homesun to maintain it's new cash source. that they paid below the accounting value of the estate and further they're rationalising the accounting systems. based upon banking practice, charges and number of hands it passes through I suspect that Aviva reckons it isn't worth the additional hassle of auditing an additional quarter million transactions each year

Also it's good PR

[doreen wright (from livejournal.com)]

Very interesting. I have one of the original "Free installations" from Homesun.

The installation was carried out by EAGA. Any future maintenance as I understood at the time in January 2011 would be carried out by Eaga.
About 18 months later ,2012 Carillion were appointed the agent for servicing the system.

Now that Aviva have taken over the financial "grab" of all systems installed by Homesun does anyone know who is now carrying out the maintenance in the future. Its all gone very quiet at Homesun.

As a member of Homesun's trial team for new innovations I have had no information or contact with Homesun Since the Aviva involvement.

Doreen Wright

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I do hope the maintenance and replacement inverters take place when they're supposed to.