This post is about a choice most people do not realise they are making.
- You can buy a solar battery system from a catalogue.
- Or you can have one designed.
Speak To An Expert
A lot of people avoid conversations with installers or salespeople because they are scared of being sold to. Fair enough. The industry has earned that distrust. Too many bad actors and shiny promises. So people skip the chat and go straight to forums instead. One question, a couple of genuinely useful answers hidden in dozens wrong ones floating in a sea of side conversations, distractions and petty gripes.
Avoiding the conversation with a professional does not protect you, it just pushes you into a mire of confusion and second-guessing.
I’m not asking you to spend hours with a pushy salesman. I’m asking you to consider spending ten minutes talking to someone (ideally IRL!) who knows what questions to ask and why they matter.
A competent installer or sales person will not just ask how much energy use on an average day. They’ll show you how to see how much electricity you use every hour, so they can get the ratio of solar to battery right.
Your Future Plans Matter
The best ones will ask how things might change in the future. EVs. Heat pumps. Renos. Retirement. Working from home. This stuff matters.
They will also ask what you want from the solar and battery.
- Do you want to generate enough solar yourself, or are you happy to rely on a ‘3 free’ plan to top up?
- Do you just want to power your home, hardly touching the grid?
- Or do you want sell back to the grid when prices spike too?
The answer to those 3 questions completely change what your system should look like.
Then come the basics that can add or subtract thousands from your quote:
- What does your switchboard look like?
- Where will the battery go?
- Do you want backup, and which circuits?
None of that is upselling, it’s competence.
Catalogue Shopping Is Not The Answer
The alternative to having a conversation, is to just pick a system from an retailer’s catalogue – Budget or Premium? Small, Medium or Large? – get an official quote by email, upload it to Facebook. No usage data beyond “I average 25 kWh per day”. No mention of how you intend to use the system. No switchboard context. No tariff info. No backup goals.
Just a spec sheet and a price, waiting for permission from strangers you’ll never meet to buy this sophisticated high current energy system subsidised by thousands of tax payer dollars. The same strangers you’ll be asking to rate your install, tell you why your backup isn’t working, and why your monitoring looks weird.
You need a solar and battery that fits how your home uses energy now, how it might use it later, and has the features you need. Installed, tested configured and backed by a local team who will be there for you when you need them.
That starts with choosing a great local installer and having a short, informed face-to-face conversation in the spot you hope to place the battery. Not buying from a catalogue and asking Facebook for permission afterwards.
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.Â
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Aaah, this “Solar 101” wake-up prompter ought to be compulsory reading for any intending solar system buyer. As domestic energy systems grow to meet more than an incidental desire to lop energy bills a bit, the expectation vs engineering dichotomy can become a chasm of costly naivety.
National electrification inevitably leads to BEV proliferation. Put 3 BEVs in many households, with RCAC, pool pumps, etc & you have many small power stations. It is coming. All-up-front costs lots, many small steps costs many times – aware planning saves money. An expert system designer can optimise the fit, first up.
Small systems are obsolete. Only substantial arrays, inverters & batteries suffice in winter, provide full backup, and meet future needs.
My brother went 3 rounds with a system designer to produce a full system spec. The installer’s commissioning tests had to comply.
And, focus more on system cooling – no exposed west wall! Indoor + aircon is very good, even if only through a doorway.
When I went solar through SQ I got 2 quotes from folk who never bothered to come out but instead offered bog standard packages, and a third who came out, looked, talked, and made a recommendation on what he saw.
I also privately organised a 4th quote from another company SQ didn’t include as one of their recommended 3 for some reason, and their man crawled around the roof measuring things before discussing what we were after and making his recommendations. Odds are the 3rd guy’s system would not have fit due to roof angles, though it was a decent offer and very informative.
Between lack of expertise, and sheer laziness, getting good advice can be hard – a good forum will likely provide more useful advice than so called experts and lazy sellers. If you can find, and afford, actual experts …
The other issue with someone coming to your house is that they only see the current conditions. And, you’re correct, unless they get up on a ladder, they can’t know about roof angles or, in our case, that the pitch changes part-way down. One of the SQ recommended installers picked that up using google maps. He also picked up that we have some large trees on our boundary that would curtail morning production, even in summer. I had an hour long conversation with him and went with his quote-we couldn’t be happier.
Hey John – I’m really sorry to hear about your experience with our installers. Searching your name/email in our database yields no results. Can you email me at [email protected] and advise what email address you used when requesting quotes so I can look into your experience?
There are no results because people stop bothering. ditto experience here.
Similar experience. 3 quotes from SQ suggested installers. 2 of them only used Google (or Esri?) maps. No questions asked. Just a quote.
The third one was a saleswoman, She came to the house, identified the roof changing angle, shade, the state of the distribution board, asked to see power bills and enquired about our medium to long term intentions. A couple of emails followed when details were clarified and we accepted this quote.
I have no way to know if this was the best system or the best installer. A salesperson is important for the choice we make.
What are “BEVs in many households, with RCAC, “
Battery Electric Vehicles and Reverse Cycle Air Conditioners
Couldn’t agree more regarding the advice from unqualified strangers; keyboard warriors with NFI, retail sales reps, installers who are disciples of a brand that might just catch fire or have been around for 5 minutes but sure do give great kick backs.
Online forums are not all bad. Along with manufacturer instruction videos that some quality brands produce there are plenty of hints and tips worth taking on board for considering your system requirements and making best use of it.
There are also experienced users of particular systems with a wealth of practical knowledge or have at least had a few systems installed and can information about the pitfalls.
Another issue is the end user. They can be anything from super nerd electrical engineer to “what’s a kWh or kW?”
Where do you go to find an installer who has the time and inclination to assess you current and future needs then design and install it for a reasonable price? How many installers, even sole traders really do this?
Im not sure i totally agree with the premises here, today when we buy a vehicle we don’t need someone to design us one, rather we just choose one from the plethora available. In most cases we do that knowing that the likelihood of an exact match of needs/wants to that available is unlikely and some compromise is a forgone conclusion.
We are expected to.kmow enough about vehicles to be able to do that. To me solar/battery is the same. We are expected to know enough to be able to choose the most appropriate things that plug into our house. So to in the future the house energy systems. There will be those that know a lot, they will thrive, there will be those that don’t or can’t they will be taken advantage of, just as is the case in every other aspect of our lives.
For the cheat sheet version choose medium to good quality. Buy the most PV that can fit and you can afford, buy only enough battery to meet your daily needs, buy an EV and charger that is bidirectional to supplement your HB
The rising popularity of Chinese EVs is showing that many people prioritise value. The catalogue style companies can offer a cookie cutter option that suits most people with return on investment periods well less than 5 years. Also, 3 hour free plans becoming mandatory means that perfectly designed solar arrays are not as important anymore (when coupled with a cheap battery).
Yeah, I reckon we are approaching or have passed the point where we are simply buying yet another household commodity. Now that said, there will always be some element of design done, some like the author would like it done up front before anyone sets foot on the roof, where that design work is done by an expert, others buying a commodity are happy for the installer to do the plus a bit minus a bit to make the package work with your home reality. Looking back in history commoditisation has generally given us lower costs, and faster turn around times. I’m Ok with those myself.
when your local big box store sells these and you simply get a local sparky from your local paper trades advertisements around to install just as we do for a split system aircon will come in time. In NSW we have a set of legislated home efficiency targets that new houses must meet, How long before every new home has to be delivered with Batt and PV? Cant be too far away me thinks.
I wonder which FB page prompted this article. (Thinking emoji)
Possibly the same one I used to enjoy but the issues noted here put me off.
I gave up after the multiple incorrect replies to questions and people wanting advice on house plans.
Now it seems to be advice on solar and or battery quotes.
I think they can remove the ‘Efficient’ part of their name too.
I know which page you are referring to and I think they should just rename it Rate my install
I had my first go at solar, and was successful mainly because of solar quotes and their 3 quotes offer.
Then came cyclone Alfred, we were without mains power for 3 days. After that I upped the size of my battery from 12 to 19kWh, because we really struggled to limit power usage for those 3 days as they were overcast.
Then came the storms in November, we were without power for 6 days. Partial backup in the middle of summer with only a small bedroom air conditioner operational was no fun. We had also noticed that the battery, even enlarged, was not enough to get us through to the next day when running our aircons int he living areas at night.
So next week my installer is doubling the size of my battery, putting in a bigger inverter and more panels, and moving me over to full house backup.
The end of that long winded story being, even if the installer goes through it with you, you wont know what is really important to you until you have experienced using solar and batteries.
I certainly agree with this article. It’s extremely important to have a quote that is specific for your situation.
What is annoying though is the couple times I’ve tried through solar quotes to get a proper quote all I received was a basic costing without taking my house and use into consideration. Has anything changed in the last few years? Will I get proper quotes if I try again?
Do folk really need custom design for battery installations though? Just as cars offer the choice of BMW, BYD, Honda, Tesla, Toyota etc, batteries offer the choice of BYD, Fronius, SolarEdge, Sungrow, Tesla etc.
Like cars, you can choose base model, or upgrade to more premium options. Obviously it’s not 1:1 but there’s stats to analyse, and it’s up to you to do your own research as to what suits, what you like, what you can afford, and what’s optimal.
An expert can of course guide you, but ultimately it’s up to you decide how you weight thing in deciding e.g. a battery just large enough to cover your minimum daily grid use, a battery large enough to survive a week of darkness, or a system you can afford with the coins fallen down the back of your couch. You aren’t designing a house, or mapping out a garden, it’s really just basic data analysis and decision making.
Does that make it harder, or easier, than helping a 5 year old build a Lego project? : – P
It is important to accurately define your system requirements before purchase and installation.
I recently installed solar in a new house. As an electrical engineer I calculated the size of system I needed based on my expected usage. Then I looked around to see what systems were on the market that met my requirements.
I had originally intended to use SolarEdge as I had a SE system on my previous house that worked well. But recently I had a problem with it and SE support was woeful.
Instead I decided to go with Sigenergy, even though it was new to Australia, because of generally good reviews and impressive system specs.
Then I got 3 quotes from SQ (all good, hard to pick between them) and found a good installer. Now I have a great system which has exceeded all my expectations.
I feel we need to discuss with the team who actually does the installation and not salesperson, which basically means disregarding most of the big companies technically. I was considering the size of the 3 phase inverter when speaking to the salesperson of a reputable company. Jumping off a 5Kw inverter, I asked would a 10 be OK, or do I need a bigger one (after telling him the average power generated by my 1.5 year old solar PVs). The answer I received was 10 is already better than what you’ve got.
Now that I’ve got a 10 kW inverter installed I’d prefer to have a minimal of 15 installed to cater with “whole house backup” to include the ducted air con system.