Unfortunately, all the hype in the mainstream media about batteries has made people question the viability of solar without batteries – to the extent that people are waiting for ‘affordable batteries’ before they invest in solar.

Don’t get me wrong – with the right installer, using certain brands, it is possible to get a great deal on a solar and battery system when you buy them in one hit.

If you can get such a deal – go for it. But if you can’t – or if they’re still outside your budget – my advice remains ‘don’t wait to put on solar’.

Every day you don’t have solar is another day you do have to pay high electricity bills. A well designed solar system without batteries can give you tiny bills.

Waiting 2, 3 or 4 years for batteries to become affordable means another 2, 3 or 4 years of high bills. One day, batteries will make lots of sense – and when that day comes they can easily be added to any existing solar system using a method called AC coupling.

So don’t lose years of savings waiting for cheap batteries to arrive.

Consider going solar now – with the knowledge that you can easily retrofit batteries later when they will pay for themselves – not before.

This may come as a shock to some people, but you shouldn’t believe everything a salesperson says!

Almost every week someone will tell me that they’ve had a solar installer tell them that they need to have their systems serviced once every two years (or more) in order for the system to stay in warranty.

This is bollocks. Speaking as a chartered electrical engineer, good-quality solar systems will only need to be serviced once every 5 years, and cleaned once per year.

If you have a slimy salesman telling you that you’ll need to pay some kind of ‘maintenance fee’ to keep your panels in warranty, show them the door.

Another tactic that dishonest salesmen use is to assure you that your solar systems will have a 25 year ‘performance warranty’, to make it seem like any problems that befall your system will be covered under this apparent 25-year warranty.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. It’s very easy for solar manufacturers to wriggle out of this ‘performance warranty’, by claiming that any defects in the panels fall under the ‘panel warranty’, which can only be 5 years in some cases.

In reality, there are actually four separate warranties that you get with your solar system – the ‘performance warranty’ being one of them. The other three are for your inverter, the panels themselves, and the workmanship. In terms of warranty, what you really want to look for is:

• 

  10 Year
  warranty

  for your inverter

• 

  25 Year
  warranty

  for your solar
  panels

• 

  5 Year
  warranty

  for the
  workmanship

This couldn’t be further from the truth! East or west facing panels only lose 15% output compared to north-facing.

In fact, depending on the time of day you use your electricity, it may make more sense for your solar panels to face east or west (for morning or evening heavy electricity usage habits, respectively). I go into greater detail about this topic here.

There you have it! The top 7 mistakes people make when purchasing solar systems.