Hello Energy Reviews
About
Hello Energy is a Solar Power Installation company based in and serves NSW. Here are their reviews as submitted by visitors to SolarQuotes
The views expressed by reviewers are theirs alone, and do not necessarily reflect those of Peacock Media Group, which makes no representations as to the accuracy of the reviews. For our full disclaimer and further information, see our Terms of Use and our Review Guidelines.
Hello Energy Reviews (2)
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Average Scores
4.5/5
Value for money
4.5/5
Quality of System
4.5/5
Installation
5.0/5
Customer Service
- 5 star 1
- 4 star 1
- 3 star 0
- 2 star 0
- 1 star 0
View Timeline
22 April 2019
14 December 2017
The HelioEnergy quote was competitive with the other two quotes we got. The two men doing the installation under Shan's supervision were very good, careful, polite and hardworking - they know their jobs.
One of the other installers sent an overpriced quote and later asked what discount they needed to give to get the business. Others overestimated the ROI and payback period and were very light on technical specifications. Warranties varied greatly and were largely ambiguous. It was not until you read the fine print and pushed for details that you really saw that the loosely claimed warranties came with many caveats.
Our panels are flat mounted on a 2-degree sloped Klip Lok roof. We chose flat rather than angle mounting as this avoids additional wind loading and also gives a longer and flatter output over the day and seasons. It also means that you don’t have to seek council permission for the installation. We also had to make sure that the roof would carry the load of the panels which came to 1700Kg all up. This load required us to obtain a Structural suitability Compliance Certificate before work could start. HelioEnergy was able to provided us with an independent consultant at half the rate of the original consultant used by the builder of our complex.
As Shan and I are both Electrical Engineers, it was a pleasure to be able to discuss the electrical details of our installation with him. He showed no bias in the pros and cons between the various brands of panels and inverters and answered all the questions I raised.
We settled on 72 Jinko Solar JKM310-M60 310W panels, a Fronius 3 phase SYMO 20kW inverter and Solar Analytics Monitoring for our panels, these components being the best value for money taking into account claimed panel and inverter longevity, warranty and output per panel plus extensive monitoring.
We opted not to go with micro-inverters or optimisers as our panels are never shaded during summer from sunrise to sunset and very minimally early morning during winter. I always opt for the simplest system where possible and appropriate - fewer components mean greater reliability.
As I mentioned earlier, we opted to use the Solar Analytics Hub to monitor the panels’ performance and also breakdown of individual panels. This is a much more sophisticated monitoring system than that included in the Fronius itself. Solar Analytics monitor the actual solar insolation in your area and compare that with the output of your Solar System on a daily basis. This is graphically shown on their excellent App together with many other performance criteria apart from cost savings etc etc. It’s uncanny how the performance graph shows exactly to within a few minutes when clouds pass over the panels.
Our Solar Analytics system is connected via 3G mobile to their website. Apart from a Master Account, they also set up an additional read-only account of our system on their website so that all apartment owners can monitor our Solar System in real time. Shan also organised a 3G mobile Lifetime subscription with Solar Analytics for us – an option no other supplier even mentioned or offered in their quotes, and is a big saving long term.
Coming to the Inverter now, the best location for mounting it turned out to be down in our MDF Basement room rather than close to the panels on the roof. This was due to the fact that a 20kW inverter, running at full capacity, and even with a 97.5% efficiency, still puts out around 500W of heat. This meant that we could not mount it inside one of our fire rated and sealed Electrical Cupboards on the top floor and thus required us to run the six DC strings all the way to the MDF room. More expensive, but much safer from the point of possibly overheating the Electrical Cupboard (cutting vents in the Cupboard doors is prohibited).
As it turned out, mounting the inverter in the basement MDF room was a good choice even apart from the heat factor. The Inverter, when running at full power, and even well below that, puts out a fair bit of fan noise. Had we mounted it the Electrical Cupboard, it would have been too noisy for the apartments on that floor.
Our MDF basement room has very poor to no mobile reception. Although I was told that the Solar Analytics Hub stores up to 14 days’ worth of data, and can therefore cope with intermittent loss of mobile connection, Shan went the extra mile and came back to reinstall our the 3G antenna in a better location, ensuring that we always have an uninterrupted connection. This makes Live monitoring properly real-time (every 10 seconds) and also means that we get an immediate warning if one or more of our Solar Panels becomes defective.
Installation of our system was carried out in a thoroughly professional manner with Shan keeping a close eye on the job and often doing some of the work himself. He also looked after the application process for our Solar connection to the grid so that we would be credited for our feed-in power.
Admittedly, this is the first and only solar installation I have been involved in, but I was impressed with the quality and timeliness of the work and would recommend his team without hesitation. HelioEnergy have been in business for more than 5 years (this was a must for us as it eliminates most fly-by-nighters) and is big enough and with sufficient resources to handle up 100kW systems, yet small enough to give personalised service. Shan's installers work directly for him, so quality is much better controlled than if the installation is subcontracted.