Solar Plants Ltd 

Please help me. I've got solar plant booked in to put clips on for our solar panels today but no one turned up and now when I ring their number and get through to the extension number, the line is just dead. Nothing. No tone. No one answering which is very concerning. They cancelled last week due to staff being ill and now my roofers are waiting to tile, but cant until the clips for solar panels are in. Please help as I cant communicate with anyone from Solar Plant with no one answering the phone.

The start to finish was all on time friendly and professional. The fitting was discussed and
Everything taken into consideration. I chose to have it fitted under my stairs. Connected to Wi- Fi before engineer left.

they were very good from the start to the end nothing to much trouble at all

Appalling service.
My Panels have been out of action for a month. Still no date for an engineer. The good news is That I have found another company!
Michael

Not a fan of this company as their after sales service is almost non existent. I have had a fault on one of my panels for over six months, maybe longer and I was told that my system would be monitored to prevent this. No it wasn't. When I repeatedly reported the fault an engineer came out and replaced a transponder, a fix which lasted a few hours. Again after repeatedly reporting the fault, still no action under the warrant agreement as yet. Now I want the panels removed because the fittment by another company damaged the felt and left a couple of tiles cracked. I am told it is two full days work and £1500 to remove the panels and refit them, considering that when this was done when I had the new inverter, transponders and damaged panels changed, panels cleaned, it only took half a day.

There are still a lot of people in the solar panels market and not all of them are on your side. Solar Plants have justly won awards for their work, and based on my experience they are a company you can rely on. They don't give you a quote, they give you three: one for their best system with all the trimmings (and the biggest savings), one for a mid-price system and one for a budget system. They explain clearly what you are getting for the extra money in each case.
I chose the top of the range system which includes a battery and a smart switcher that means that in the summer you use the battery as the sun goes down and it charges up next day: in the winter you've used the battery by the end of the evening and you charge it from the mains overnight - but with companies like Octopus as your supplier, you can have time-dependent charging which means you can charge up at a very cheap rate and then use that electricity next day when the grid charge is at its peak. Clever, eh?
So good system, competent installation, quality product: what's not to like!

First of all, can I say the installation team were excellent. That;s where it ends. The aftersales service is the worst I have ever come across. It has been six months since I had my battery installed. Shortly after the install a problem with the cooling fan cropped up. I have been waiting ever since for this to be rectified.

I mean. How difficult is it to obtain a replacement and get it fitted?

I could have driven to Germany to collect the part myself quicker than the response I am getting from Solar Plants

everything done on time. easy to use the website and software. hardly noticed the work being done.

The Solar Plants salesman who sold me my solar panels gave me great confidence as he was knowledgeable and not pushy. From then on my experience with Solar Plants has been such that I cannot recommend them. It has been impossible to communicate with the company in a normal fashion as they do not respond to phone calls and requests to communicate. They did not show up for an installation appointment yesterday (19 Nov 2019) and when they came (today 20 Nov 2019) they brought 24 solar damaged panels that we could not accept.

I purchased a 4KW system from this company in 2013.. it has a warranty for 10 years so despite an unfortunate series of events with installation I thought it would be ok should there be future problems. Six weeks ago the system failed and the company is still unable to attend to the repair. The one and only time that I have needed their assistance and it is unable to respond. I have had several apologies when I contact them but what I want is for them to contact me with a date for a repair .. I have waited patiently for six weeks and when asked will it be before or after Christmas they are unable to answer.
This is unacceptable and costly.

A whole year has past since I had Solar Plants upgrade my Solar system. The weather this year (2019) has been similar to 2018 with exception of the summer months: May through August 2019 was very disappointing with a lot of cloud cover, which was in sharp contrast to the glorious summer of 2018.
The summer months over the past 5 years have produced for the months May through August:
2015 4213 KW
2016 4036 KW
2017 4112 KW
2018 4615 KW
2019 4253 KW
The poor 2019 summer has resulted in a reduction of 7.8% in electrical power generation, which in turn will affect negatively on the over all annual efficiency of the upgraded system installed in October 2018. When comparing it with the old system.
Looking back over the 5 years I have had the panels. The production of electricity has been as follows:
November October
2014 2015 7680 KW
2015 2016 7078 KW
2016 2017 7377 KW 4 year average 7460 KW
2017 2018 7705 KW
2018 2019 7953 KW
The upgraded system has produced an increase in efficiency of 6.6% over the previous 4 year average. When comparing this with the best producing year (2018) the efficiency has increased 3.2%
When I installed the upgraded system I was told that I could expect an increase in efficiency of 2.5% to 10% dependent on the weather conditions. My actual figures show that Solar Plants were correct in their forecast.
Conclusion
Have I been happy investing in a Solar panels system? Yes. The feel good factor alone makes this a worth while exercise, as I have reduced my CO2 foot print considerably from the panels. According to the Solar Edge "app" the savings from the panels alone amounts to 22,300 KG per year.
Given that I have gone over to Electric cars and charge my cars up during the day, I have reduced my fuel cost by £2,550 per year.
Was the further investment in the Solar Plants upgrade worth it? In my opinion yes, as it has increased the efficiency of my panels, particularly during the the months when the sun is low and the shadows are long.
I have still rated Solar Plants with 4 stars because the app has not operated properly, (which is a pity as the concept is very good). I have resorted to taking the daily production figures manually, to ensure a accurate monitoring of the system. Had they been on top of this fault, then they would have merited a 5 star rating.

We had batteries added to our system on 6 September. We were told that we could read output etc from our house (the installation is in the garage as the installers said it had to stand on the floor). The installers had trouble making a connection, and this connection failed after a couple of days. We reported this, but so far nothing has been done. BUT that is a minor problem on 1st October the system failed and we duly reported this. Since then NOTHING we phone to chase and are told they will follow up and come back to us, they NEVER do we have to phone and chase again and again. We are still waiting to be told when an engineer can be bothered to visit us! My husband rather lost his cool with them a couple of days ago and for the first time we got an email from them, it basically said “we are busy and you will have to wait”. This system has now been not working for longer than it has been working.

Until now I would have trusted Solarplant, but now?

UPDATE ON OUR TERRIBLE EXPERIENCE

Our battery system has now been broken for more than 28 days, and so far nothing from Solar Plant as to when they will even come and look at it, yet alone fix it. When we contact them they either promise to let us know what is happening and don’t, or (and this is the best we have had so far) send us a ‘holding’ email.

All we want is a working system

Solar Plants were professional and friendly throughout the whole process from my initial enquiry through the installation and now the after care. No request has been too much trouble. Everyone I have been in contact with has been helpful. I'm 100% happy to recommend them.

Helpful, friendly company
Communicate well
Installers very friendly and explain new products well

Quick, efficient and left no mess!

January we had solar panels fitted and we were very pleased with the results and the excellent and helpful service received by Solar plants. Recently we had a 6.3 SolarEdge battery fitted again by Solar Plants again excellent service.

A very professional company who is growing

I was one of the early-adopters of Solar PV and one of the first to sign up for the Feed-in Tariff. Whereas I anticipate my 20 panels will be functioning to the end of the 25 year term I always knew that the inverters had a much shorter life. It was over 9 years before the first of my inverters had a bit of a hiccough and then only for a day, but it was a warning and the time had come to investigate the replacements/upgrades/micro-inverters etc that cold-calling companies had been bothering me with for years now.
By putting various key words into an internet search I discovered the Solar Plants website and after only a few minutes realised I had stumbled upon a company likely to provide what I needed rather than push what they had to sell... then a web chat 'thing' popped up, even though it was about 8pm! From previous experience I was a bit wary but I needn't have worried. The tone of the chat continued along the lines of what I have come to accept as company policy... gently probing to establish the needs of the enquirer before suggesting what Solar Plants had to offer to satisfy the requirements. Although I had been following advances in Solar PV what was being proposed was new to me and I was keen to accept first a phone call that evening and then a visit before lunch the next day to find out more face to face.
Nineteen days after that first internet search eight panels had been fitted with optimisers (more cost effective than micro-inverters) and reinstalled on a South-facing structure I built next to the remaining twelve panels which were also fitted with individual optimisers (25 year warranty) so that they could all be fed into a single inverter with a 20 year warranty. An ethernet cable from the inverter gives me real-time information on my computer screen of the performance of each individual panel (which can now yield their maximum instead of being held back to that of the poorest in the string) and the overall output of the system which opens up a number of options on a sunny day. If I have only 500W to spare I can switch on my Air Source Heat Pump (split level air conditioning) with its COP 5 to put 2,500W warm air into the living room, without the import meter moving!. The Ground Source Heat Pump (COP 4) needs about 1.5 kW available to warm up the floor slab with 6 kW by underfloor heating, again without importing any electricity. Recharging my Plug-in Hybrid EV @ 10A from the 13A plug charger needs a spare 2.5 kW from my 3.5 kWp system. If I was in a hurry to use the car the 16A Charge Point with its 4 kW requirement would take all the available output from the panels and draw the rest from the Grid. I am being paid to run my electric car (a 2 tonne Outlander SUV) with £0 Road Tax for nothing saving over £2,500 a year for the last five years... but, as everybody keeps telling me, "Electric cars are expensive!"... in another ten years it will have been free before going into negative cost, but the same people said solar panels were a waste of time.
As you may have gathered I can be a little judgemental at times, but not about Solar Plants Ltd. Not a single department lets them down, in my experience it is a genuine five stars all round... richly deserved.

First rate experience from conception to completion. We contacted Solar Plants having seen their display at the Swindon National House Building Centre. From the moment we spoke to Ian Hewson we felt we were talking to an industry expert. We were unable to connect to the grid for our large new build house due to distance and expense. Solar Plants designed and installed a carefully calibrated system to ensure we had more than enough power when demand would be at it's highest. They know the market well and use the best equipment and batteries. We paired the solar system with a back up LPG generator although we are expecting to call on this very rarely. The house has now achieved 'carbon positive' status and it is estimated will produce <18 MWh / yr of energy (The equivalent of over 10 tonnes of CO2 / yr will be saved).
Solar Plants, Ian Hewson and installer Scott and team have been utterly superb throughout and we would highly recommend them.