Solar panels: Thousands of customers complain

[UndercoverElephant]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-49566130

Thousands of people who bought solar panels have complained to a financial watchdog that they are not bringing them the returns they were promised.

Many people took out loans to pay for panels on the promise they would save thousands of pounds in electricity costs and make money generating power.

They say they have not had the expected savings, and the Financial Services Ombudsman has had 2,000 complaints.

Barclays Bank has put aside £38m to deal with potential claims

[adam2]

Somewhat concerning. It is not clear to me exactly what the actual or alleged problem is.

Is that the PV installations are not producing the number of KWH that was claimed ?
Or is it that the consumers had unreasonable expectations as to the output ?
Or that loans taken out to pay for the installation rendered the economics doubtful ?

[clv101]

I expect the calculations were 'best case', but in many cases the cowboy installers did a poor job. Common problems being the orientation and pitch of the roof not being as good as assumed in the calculations, shadows caused by dormor windows, chimneys or trees or just dirt or poor cable connections bringing down yield.

[BritDownUnder]

I suspect that the simple explanation is that as with all business opportunities financial sharks moved in and took advantage overcharging for an underperforming product backed up by unreasonable projections of future income. Sound familiar? Pensions, life insurance, endowment mortgages, extended warranties etc. I remember as a corporate financial drone in the UK working for a life insurance company doing reviews of endowment policies. I looked at some of the correspondence in one of the files from a disgruntled customer complaining in a letter that the salesperson (a woman I think) was driving a Porsche 911 and had lied to them.

Looking at Mr Thompson's case it looks like he borrowed/bought for 10,000 pounds a six panel grid tied system. Not sure on the year or rebates but currently you can get a, let's call it a 2kW system (six panels plus inverter) installed for 2,995/3,250/4000 pounds from a quick search of the internet in the UK.

So poor Mr Thompson overpaid by at least 6,000 pounds and should have done his research a bit better. He was conned. pure and simple. the company is now bankrupt and the directors are long gone sunning themselves in Spain.

Caveat Emptor.