Should you buy the cheapest solar system on the market?

Everyone loves a bargain. Especially me! But are those solar systems advertised at jaw droppingly low prices a great deal or a future headache?

I feel quite strongly about this – so I decided to make a video. Here it is.

And here’s the transcript if you prefer to read rather than watch:

Hi, I’m Finn Peacock and I’m the founder of solarquotes.com.au. Now over the last 4 years I’ve been asked probably thousands of questions about solar power.

The number one most common question I get asked is this;

“Hey Finn, thanks for the free quotes really appreciate it, they were great guys, looked like really good quality systems and  they knew what they’re talking about but I found a cheaper quote elsewhere, should I go with those guys”?

Well, maybe, but just be aware that if it’s much cheaper than the guys I have referred you to, or much cheaper than anyone else on the market, what is that telling you about the potential quality of the components and the install?

I give lots of advice about how to rate a solar installer, you can look the solar company’s reviews up on my website. We’ve got 8,000 almost 10,000 reviews of almost every solar installer in Australia, and you can Google:

“[company name ]  Whirlpool”

Which will give you the Whirlpool results which is a kind of no holds barred solar forum. And the people that ask these questions sometimes do that and they find some really, really bad experiences with the company, but they still go with them because they’re the cheapest.

And the reason they go with them is that they ring up the company  give them a chance and they say, “hey you know, what kind of solar panels do you use”? And these guys say, “we use mono crystalline solar panels”. Well that means nothing! That’s just the type of technology. You need to find out what solar panel brand they use. And if you do find out what brand they use, and if you can’t find any third party validation on the web that those panels are any good, they’re probably crap, same with the inverter.

Now, the other place that could cause problems is the installation. I’ve seen very cheap solar installation companies that are charging half of what I think it would take to do a proper quality solar installation, trust me, you don’t want those guys installing your solar system. This is an electrical system that carries lots of current, lots of voltage and if it goes wrong it can be nasty. Now a well installed solar system is highly unlikely to go wrong, it’s probably safer than the rest of the electrics in your house, if your house is more than about 5 years old.

But a badly installed solar system is bad news, I would not be comfortable having a badly installed system on my house.

So if you’re considering a really cheap solar system, do your research, read the blog, there is all sorts of advice and tips of there about how to work out if the solar system is a really good deal or if it’s just a really cheap system that won’t do the job. So do your research and please think really long and hard before going for the absolute cheapest system in the market. Because at the end of the day, when was the last time you ever bought the absolute cheapest option and how the good experience in the medium to long term? Probably never, that’s me, Finn Peacock talking about really cheap solar systems and I think you know my opinion now.