You’ll Pay A High Price For Second Hand Solar Equipment
“Psssssst! Wanna buy some slightly used solar panels? They fell off the back of a truck. Or possibly off the back of a roof. Maybe they even fell off the back of a roof of a truck. We just don’t know. But what I do know is they are tier one panels in great condition – they didn’t fall far – and they’re cheap, so if you are looking to install rooftop solar you’d be a fool not to buy them, right?”
Wrong. [Read more…]
Sydney Opera House In Sustainability Scam Shocker! Photo Credit: Finn
This morning the Australian Financial Review reported on how the Sydney Opera House and Energy Australia, and apparently even the CSIRO, are teaming up to create a solar energy trading scheme that, on the face of it, is completely useless. But, once you think it through, it clearly makes the world a worse place. [Read more…]
Tindo Solar is now owned by SA company ‘Cool or Cosy’.
Tindo Solar, Australia’s only manufacturer of Solar panels has been bought by South Australia’s insulation, solar installation, and energy efficiency company Cool or Cosy.
The deal was announced on… Well actually, it hasn’t been announced yet1. But since I’m from Queensland, obviously I know Julian Assange, so you can trust me to know all the secrets. [Read more…]
OneSolar make a lot a lot of claims on their website that just don’t stack up.
When it comes to choosing solar panels and inverters, we recommend sticking to well known brands.
Over the years we’ve seen lots of obscure panel brands hit Australian shores, often with slick websites, and almost always with dubious claims of being ‘engineered’ in anywhere-but-China.
Our experience is that the quality of these mysterious brands is often poor, and if they fail a few years down the line it can be very hard to find the company that originally imported or manufactured them. [Read more…]
Sorry can be the hardest word.
I am writing this article to apologize to Australian Premium Solar, also known as APS.
On the 20th of January this year I wrote an article entitled, “Australian Premium Solar Turn A 30 Year Warranty Into A One Year Warranty.”
In the article I did the following:
I of course apologize for none of that, as I still believe it all to be true. [Read more…]
Australian Premium Solar. Not made in Australia and not Premium. (Screenshot from now-deleted APS Youtube video: Caution-tape is mine)
Australian Premium Solar is a company that sells solar panels with a warranty that is truly exceptional and sets them apart from all other panels on the market. [Read more…]
Look what Santa got for Christmas.
From all of us here at SolarQuotes® : John, Rob, Jono, Ronald, Claudio, Chantel, Margherita, Bec and Finn, have a great Christmas under your LED and solar powered Christmas lights.
See you next week, with a turkey sandwich and a post rounding up what happened in Australian Solar Land during 2016.
Have you heard the news? The solar rebate is ending! It’s all over the internet. Or at least all over the parts of the internet that run ads from shonky solar companies. According to them, if you don’t rush out right now to get rooftop solar installed before the first of January you’ll end up paying a fortune for it! If you don’t buy now, the price of a typical 5 kilowatt rooftop solar system will rise by…
…just a second… let me work it out…
Around $263 which is about a 4% increase. [Read more…]
Has your solar panel’s ‘product warranty’ has been magically transformed from 10 to 25 years thanks to Australian Consumer Law?
When people ask me about solar panel warranties, I tell them to look at the product warranty. This is usually for 10 or 12 years.
I tell them not to worry about the performance warranty, which is normally for 25 years or sometimes 30. You see, while most manufacturers are happy to honor their product warranties, not all of them expect to replace solar panels that fail while they are only covered by their performance warranty. [Read more…]
SolarWatt’s German homepage claims their panels are “Perfekt”. That’s a big call, but their warranty certainly seems as good as it gets.
When it comes to product warranties for solar panels, the American company SunPower has long been king with one that lasts for 25 years. Not only will they replace any of their panels that fail in that time, but they will send people around to install a new one free of charge and cart away the corpse of the dead panel for autopsy to discover why it died so young.
But SunPower is no longer king. They have been dethroned. Their quarter of a century product warranty has been beaten by the 30 year product warranty Germany’s Solarwatt has placed upon their double glass panels, which is three times the 10 year industry standard.
That is a very long time. With the average age of first time home owners in Australia now around 38 years, people could buy a set of Solarwatt panels for their first home and they won’t be out of warranty until after they retire. And maybe they’ll die of old age before any of their panels start to fail.
While in practical terms for most homeowners there is not a huge difference between a 25 year and a 30 year product warranty, But I am very impressed with the confidence Solarwatt has in their solar panels and I am interested in seeing if SunPower will eventually extend its product warranty to meet or beat theirs. [Read more…]
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