Mid-2012 we had solar panels and an inverter by Eco Plus after what I can only describe as a very dodgy salesman scribbling figures that didn't add up. And before I got the chance to tell her to get other quotes, too, mum agreed to it. The way that all came to be suggests that she must have been waylaid by one of those spruikers that accost you in a shopping centre and arrange a visit from a travelling salesman. The system was supposedly planned to half our power bill, but it never did. And getting it installed was a nightmare.
Firstly there was a long wait before anything happened. Getting sick of that I rang the company to find out what the delay was, to be told they were still awaiting council approval. So I rang the council, to be told the form had been lodged without the required fee, and the installer had been informed of this. So I called the installers back and told them what I'd found out. Their response was why should they have to pay the fee? No apology for lying to me, or dragging things needlessly out.
Well, how about you're the one's who lodged the forms, you should know this, you're the one organising everything to do with the installation. And either you get a cheque from us beforehand to pay for that fee, or you factor it into the bill you present to us.
That and what happened next just cemented the impression that this was some two-bit organisation run from some tiny office by people who didn't know what they're doing, just farming the work out to contractors. There are plenty of other small office organisations, I'd dealt with a few of them when I was doing video production work, but they all knew what they're doing.
There was more delays before anything happened. They didn't have the stock they needed to install anything, and they substituted parts different from what we agreed to. They didn't negotiate it, they just said that's what they were doing. They installed a slightly higher capacity inverter, so no real complaint about that. But they substituted Chinese-made panels for the supposedly (and probably actually) superior German-made ones that they were supposed to install. Same brand (Q-Cell) but made cheaper in China (not that we got any price reduction).
Everything was installed in a day. The inverter is installed next to the power meter box where it bakes in the direct sunlight for the first half of the day. And when they replaced the roofing iron after cabling it up, they screwed straight through the power cable for a lights, and blew the fuse. They didn't check that everything was working before they left, and I found out later on when I went to switch the lights on. While replacing the fuse it blew with avengeance in front of my face (they'd shorted the power feed to all the house lights, so even though all the lights were switched off there was a dead short when I threw the main breaker switch). It was the next day before we had the fault repaired.
I noticed a few years after installation that some of the cells in the panel had arced over, so the system is degraded. By then the fly by night company had disappeared, and any chance of getting warrantee work is next to impossible.
The dodgy scheme the government introduced to encourage solar installations had three big issues, as far as I am concerned. One was the high feed-in rates paid to early adopters came from taxpayers, not the power companies (they pay a pittance). The other was a solar credits scheme that gives you some kind of certificate worth money for being an on-going electricity generator, but it went to the installation company for a discounted install. That is, they get a perpetual credit that you should get, and a government installation subsidy. And finally the proliferation of dodgy solar power dealers.