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 via soulless machine-generated quotes. But what wins people over – and keeps them happy for decades – are the small daily wins that never make it onto the quote.
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.
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.
Footnotes
- these are software packages that generate solar quotes ↩
About Finn Peacock
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Surprised there is nothing in your list about energy conservation. Those industry bugbears like us who do not use aircon much, no pool to run, no dryer. With modest, (nay undersized 6,6kW) solar arrays, no battery, energy bills that are manageable, and even more mystifyingly not even very energy efficient homes. And not even suffering for it.
An interesting article Finn. But remember, you are a solar nerd. What makes you happy may do the opposite for many other people. Probably including me. While I am not at the opposite end of the spectrum to you, I am certainly not out there on the high side of the centre where you are. I am somewhere a bit “left of centre”.
Some of the things you mention above would annoy me. Others simply not interest me to spend time on. I am not looking for a system to make me happy, I get my happiness from other things. I just want a good quality, well set up system that will simply work reliably, save me money, enable me to charge a battery and an EV when I buy one and intrude into my life as little as possible. A “set and forget” system. My current one is like that, ticking away for about seven years now, as was my previous one elsewhere. Blackout protection isn’t a big issue here. Siting is good. Three phase power throughout. A relatively easy setup.
But each to their own.
I went with the quote that made me “happiest” not the cheapest. I even put that in my solar quotes review at the time!
The price difference from the cheapest quote was in the order of a thousand dollars.
Well worth it in my opinion as I sit here happy as Larry 12 months after my install. They probably only ticked 3 or 4 of the boxes on your list, but those were the important boxes for me.
Yes a better app would definitely be nice, but it works well enough, and to be honest – there was no info available anywhere about the apps – can you even find that now?
Finn, what has happened to SolarQuotes? For years now I’ve been recommending your site to everyone i know if they needed any solar work done. But in the last few weeks, two different people have come back to me saying they got their three contacts but never heard back from any of them? This is really disappointing to hear!
What going on over there?
Hi LP,
There’s been a massive deluge of interest in solar and some installers have even been switching off our service because they’re busy enough without new leads.
Everyone is under the pump.
However your friends will have received email from us asking are they satisfied with the quotes and when they submit feedback we can either police the slackers or find new ones.
We need the customer responses to take action though, otherwise we just don’t know.
Finn all of those points have always been covered in Off Grid Solutions quotes because they had to be.
An Off Grid Solution was responsible entirely to power a lifestyle without the benefit of having a big brother (the Grid) to step in when the Solar System installation failed for any reason.
An Off Grid design is a critical service, unlike a Solar PV Installation which is NOT a critical service design.
In other words, Off Grid Solutions were and still are, integrated Power Plant Designs brought to life by a specialist system designer, not an installer.
Funny how the worm turns over time. I recall you often being dismissive of Off Grid Power Plant design commentary many years ago. You didn’t think highly of Designers Integrating their own engineering system design skills, methods and processes into their designs.
Everyone can learn from others if they step back and take a deep breath before speaking, is my experience after 55 years as a power engineer.
Lawrence Coomber
Neophyte customers unfortunately often lack the experience to demand what’s in their best interests. On these blogs we’ve had obsession with small losses, inverter, battery, or system idling, even though each is generally under 5%. Who stops to reflect that their ICE car wastes 70% of the costly fuel energy, pumping it out the exhaust pipe, using under 30% for propulsion?
Your mantra “Fill the Roof”, given useful roof acreage, yields ample free energy to nullify normal solar system losses at the most reasonable cost.
Having made the 65 km round trip to town twice yesterday, I’m again charging the BEV at full 7.2 kW, not just solar-surplus-only, to give a fully charged car quicker, if there are clouds. Robbing the (big) battery costs only a negligible smidge of cycle life, nothing from the grid.
A 40° tilted West roof grabs the sun’s last rays here, same to North, for winter at 38° S latitude. DIY house design gets what you want. It’s too much for installers & architects, I figure.
At the risk of being repetitive, that just not what you will get using Solar Quotes to obtain quotes.
I have now found a sole trader local who knows his stuff and actually lives nearby.
The last effort from SQ had quotes from over 2 hours away and they could not supply the service requested. The follow up recommendation from SQ support staff was just as far away
Great articles, great blogs, great advice on here.
Hi Matthew,
Some of the best installers are on not on SolarQuotes, sounds like you’ve found a winner who we’d like to have on the books if he’s interested.
We love small, local, ethical businesses because we know they’re often the best bar none.
Regional customers often dont have much choice but on the same side of the coin, installers who choose to cover rural areas often get all our traffic.
Some like Josh Sheppard on Kangaroo Island have only ever taken a handful of jobs, but see our affiliation as a better indicator of quality than pay-for-play blue ticks from NETCC.
Bottom line is we stand by the jobs we recommend, so you basically can’t go wrong.
Great article and love your “happy list” but how can I get that. I’ve tried solar quotes twice now and only got prices for a system that did not take my home and roof line/space into account. They wouldn’t/didnt give any idea of where and how to do the panels. I have a challenging roofline.
One could only fit 1.5kw another could fit 6kw none of them gave any schematics.
I would really like to try again but worry about finding a good company
Hi Linda,
Please give this feedback to :
[email protected].
Firstly, we like to know if there are installers offering sub par quotes.
You should get an aerial image of your place with panels on it, along with a month by month graph of the promised output.
Secondly he may be able to recommend an installer with more appetite for a challenge. Best ask for a physical measure & inspection if possible.
Great article and yeah how much is peace of mind worth healthwise !!
Amen!
The majority of systems are sold by salesmen who don’t have an electrical license, have never set foot on a roof, and don’t know the difference between a full backup on single phase vs a 3 phase house.
They sell a system while looking at their margin and commission, because it pays better than selling cars, and selling property is overcrowded and takes too much effort…
When I still see quotes of 6.6kW or 13.3kW solar system with a battery, it really shows they have 0 understanding of what they are designing. The issue that 99% of customers have no clue either (legitimately), so it’s very easy to sound like an expert, even when you aren’t.
Quoting should be limited to fully accredited installers, and if they have 0 sales skills, should partner up with a sales professional to “present” the system designed by the electrician.
Many of these unhappy executives would be unhappy anyway. Not all, but many are terrible people, its just that personality trait helps them to the top.
As a business owner dedicated to delivering old-school customer service, I’ve noticed that most potential customers nowadays prefer not to engage in conversations. Instead, they simply want us to email them a quote and leave them alone. When we try to reach out for a follow-up to enhance our service, we often find ourselves accused of harassment.