Empty Penthouses and Empty Quotes

I was talking to a doctor who does those big-ticket “executive medicals” the other day. Think $2,000, three-hour deep dives that cover everything from fitness to bloodwork to mental health. He said it was sad how many people with financial success tell him they come home to an empty penthouse every night. They achieved financial and professional success at the cost of their happiness.

That stuck with me. Because when I’m asked to analyse solar or battery quotes, almost nobody asks: which one will make me happiest? It’s always dollars, specs, kilowatts.

What Really Matters

Here’s what happiness looks like for me when I’m electrifying my home:

• Dealing with a salesperson who genuinely understands the technology they are selling.
• Dealing with a local installer who knows their craft.
• Learning from the expert the best way to use a monitoring and control app.
• A snappy, beautiful app that takes seconds, not minutes, to update energy flows.
• Cable tray (yes, neat cabling makes me unreasonably happy).
• Accurate, well-drawn Single Line Diagrams of what’s been installed.
• An EV that charges on 100% solar automagically. Ideally at three-phase speeds when it’s sunny enough.
• Oversized solar that kicks in as soon as the sun rises.
• Oversized solar that keeps powering my house as late into the evening as possible.
• Plenty of solar energy on an overcast day.
• A house lit up like a Christmas tree when the suburb is blacked out.
• Emails every quarter advising me on the health of my system.
• Businesses that proactively follow up with me years later to check everything is working OK.

I’ve never seen a quote that itemises these – or anything like them. 99% are just pro forma Pylon or OpenSolar¹ lists of brands, kW, kWh and dollars.

Spreadsheets Instead of Solutions

Retailers love to say they’re selling “solutions,” but most aren’t even trying. They’re selling spreadsheets. The industry obsesses over paybacks and kilowatts when what wins people over – and keeps them happy for decades – are the small daily wins that never make it onto the quote.

Those soulless machine-generated quotes obsess over paybacks and kilowatts. But in the long run, the system that keeps the customer smiling is the one they’ll brag about, defend, and enjoy using. If retailers want customers to stop treating solar like a commodity, they need to start selling the lived benefits instead of the numbers.

If a solar company gets this right, the proprietor might not be funding a penthouse in the city. Cheap and oversized items will always sell faster. But they might build a solid business that pays for a good family home, and have a long list of genuinely satisfied local customers. That beats rattling around an empty penthouse, wondering why they sold their soul for volume.

Phase Shift is a weekly opinion column by SolarQuotes founder Finn Peacock. Subscribe to SolarQuotes’ free newsletter to get it emailed to your inbox each week along with our other home electrification coverage.