[00:15] Alec – Hello and welcome to the SME Business Show with me, Alec Drew. Each show focuses on one particular topic, and so we invite an expert from that sector to share their knowledge, insights and tips to help you get the most out of your business and out of your own personal life as well. Today’s topic is solar energy for the domestic market, and I’m delighted to be joined by Brian Gleeson, Head of Domestic Energy with Alternative Energy Ireland. Hello, Brian.

[00:44] Brian – Hi, Alec. Thanks for having me on.

[00:45] Alec – Let’s just talk about what is solar energy?

[00:48] Brian – So, a domestic solar PV system is a system that generates free electricity for your home. So, typically what we do is we’d install solar PV panels on the property and then once daylight hits the panels, it generates free electricity and then you can use that to run electric appliances in your house, such as fridge, freezer, television, etc.

[01:09] Alec – That’s fantastic. And are all sorts of domestic dwellings suitable for solar energy?

[01:14] Brian – Yeah, typically I would say almost all dwellings are suitable for solar panels. The only exception would be is if literally to just know where to install the panels. So an apartment might be an example of that if there’s just no roof space available.

[01:27] Alec – I’ve seen these sort of solar arrays sort of which lie out on the land. Tell us about those and where they’re applicable.

[01:35] Brian – So some cases maybe there might not be any roof space available, but there could be ground, there could be a space in the garden or maybe a field close by where we could install a ground mounted system and wire it back to the house. So that’s certainly possible, probably more based out in the country where that might happen.

[01:52] Alec – All right. And do I need a large roof space and do I need to be site facing to get the best out of this?

[01:57] Brian – No, not necessarily. So what we would typically do is we travel to site and we’d look at the full property and the spaces available, I suppose, and then we’d also look at your ESP bills. And we’d try and design a system with those in mind. We’d look at your consumption and we’d look at the panel locations that are most suitable and design a system that’s going to work the best.

[02:19] Alec – I mean, Ireland’s not known for its really good weather and sunshiny days, so how does solar work here compared to maybe other countries?

[02:26] Brian – Well, it actually works quite well in Ireland. And funnily enough, we do have quite a high average number of solar hours per day across the year. So, you would say yes, the system will work better in the summer months during the longer days. What I love about solar PV is that even on the dullest, darkest day in winter, you are going to get free electricity from the system in your home.

[02:47] Alec – Fantastic. And will I be totally self-sufficient?

[02:50] Brian – No. So, we don’t typically aim to try and be totally self-sufficient. and we look to cover between 50 to 70% of your total annual consumption. What we would find is if you were to try to be totally self-sufficient, it’s not really practical or economical to do so.

[03:06] Alec – All right, so just the investment just doesn’t make sense at all.

[03:09] Brian – Yeah, you would tend to maybe spend twice or even three times as much money to try and cover an extra 20 to 30%. It’s just not feasible.

[03:17] Alec – All right. And is there a guaranteed output from the systems that you install?

[03:21] Brian – Yeah, so we work with a Dutch company called Atarco. And they’re quite a clever system that they’ve created. And they offer the entire solar solution. And because of that, they give us a full system performance guarantee. Which basically means that if the system doesn’t do as designed or as promised in the first five years, they have to financially compensate you for that loss. And the guarantee is underwritten by Lloyds of London.

[03:46] Alec – Wow, that’s certainly a great system. And I presume they’re monitoring that remotely?

[03:51] Brian – Yeah, so that’s it. The homeowner will have an access, a 24-hour access to their generation and their consumption in the house. And Atarco obviously have that as well. So if they see a drop in their performance, they can contact either the homeowner or ourselves to try and sort that out and make sure that the performance is as it should be.

[04:10] Alec – And so therefore they can make adjustments, if necessary, remotely from time to time?

[04:15] Brian – Yeah, from time to time. If they need to adjust a setting, yeah, absolutely. that can be done.

[04:19] Alec – What incentives are available? Because I know the Irish government are keen for people to become more sustainable and use solar energy.

[04:27] Brian – Yeah, so SEI currently offer up to 2,400 euros of a grant if you install a solar PV system in your home. The only criteria is that the house must be built before 2021. But the government introduced a great new initiative this year where they have made installing a solar PV system VAT free. So that’s a game changer and it’s something that everybody can avail of.

[04:51] Alec – That seems like a great time to be taking it on.

[04:54] Brian – Absolutely.

[04:54] Alec – And does that seem to be going to be carried into next year as well?

[04:58] Brian – Yeah, it seems like that they’ve planned to leave it that way for quite a while and it really has made a big difference, you know, because people can either get maybe a slightly bigger system than they were planning to before or in some cases it might just have made a difference for them being able to afford a system in the first place.

[05:14] Alec – That’s fantastic. People are always concerned about the amount of paperwork that has to be filled in around these sort of grants, you know, way up to our tonsils and paperwork. What happens there?

[05:23] Brian – Yeah, well, there is a lot of work in the grants, but we take on that for the homeowner. So, we would do 99% of the paperwork and we even claim the grant back on the homeowner’s behalf. So, the homeowner will only pay the after-grant price on the system.

[05:40] Alec – So, it’s the net price they’re paying and you have to collect the money.

[05:43] Brian – Yeah.

[05:43] Alec – So, you have to make sure all the paperwork’s right.

[5:45] Brian – Exactly. So, that’s on us, it’s on our head. If we don’t get the paperwork right, it’s our risk, the risk is not on the homeowner.

[05:51] Alec – Now that’s fantastic. And how long does it take for the grant to be approved once it’s submitted?

[05:56] Brian – So yeah, so once the approval goes in, it’s actually approved within an hour. They get it approved back straight away and then they give the homeowner, or they give us and the homeowner, eight months to complete the project. So we would get this system installed and we get all the paperwork back to SEI within eight months, but normally it’s done much quicker than that.

[06:13] Alec – All right, so we’ve now been approved, you’re going to send a team out to work in the house. How long can I expect to wait before that team arrives to do the work?

[06:20] Brian – At the moment, our lead time is only four to six weeks. So from date of order, you’d have the system up and running in four to six weeks.

[06:27] Alec – And how long, when they’re on site, is it going to take?

[06:30] Brian – So normally we would do an install over two days. So the roofers would land out on day one and they’d install all of the panels. And then on day two, the electricians would come, they’d install the inverter and get the system up and running before they leave.

[06:42] Alec – Are there likely to be any sort of damages or work that has to be looked after, after your teams have been there?

[06:48] Brian – No, not at all. So we have very experienced installation crews and, you know, we’d always take on a project with the aim of installing the system and leaving the house exactly as we found it.

[06:58] Alec – Let’s just talk about BER and maybe explain to our audience what BER is all about and why it’s important.

[07:04] Brian – Yeah, sure. So a BER is a building energy rating, and when you get a grant with SAI, it’s part of the terms and conditions that you must complete an after-install BER assessment. So what happens is we install the system and then a BER assessor will come out afterwards, he’ll assess the property, do a full energy rating, and he’ll issue you with a BER certificate afterwards. And we actually include this as part of the project. So it’s all organised and taken care of by ourselves.

[07:32] Alec – And there’s no additional cost to the homeowner here?

[07:34] Brian – No, it’ll all be in your initial cost. So, your net price that we spoke about, it’ll all be covered in that.

[07:39] Alec – And I suppose there’s a real advantage to having one of these. Every home is supposed to have one, isn’t it?

[07:43] Brian – Yeah, absolutely. If you ever want to rent or sell your home, you just should have one. And they will give you a list of 10 potential upgrades or improvements that you can make to your home. So, it can give you ideas of what other maybe energy measures you can look at in the future.

[07:58] Alec – There’s a lot of people taking on as solar-run cars and charging them. How does that work with the system or does it work with the system?

[08:07] Brian – Yeah, we would find a lot of our customers have EVs or maybe just plan to get one in the near future. So it’s quite a smart thing because no matter what, if you buy an electric car, your ESB bills are going to increase. So installing a solar-based system is a smart way to try and keep control of your ESB bills.

[08:26] Alec – And so I suppose you should kind of include that if you’re going to go ahead with a system, and you have a plan to get an EV.

[08:34] Brian – Yeah, absolutely. It’s something that you can look at as to try and keep control and keep your bills as low as possible.

[08:39] Alec – Am I going to end up having loads of batteries around the place that I’m going to have to store and look after?

[08:44] Brian – No, it’s funny, the market has changed a little bit in recent months since the feed-in tariff has come in and I would say only maybe 50% or less than 50% of our customers are now getting batteries with their systems. and so batteries are not essential or completely necessary anymore. But what I would say is a lot of customers still do go after batteries and, you know, installing a battery will… I suppose it’ll increase your initial outlay, but it will give you the best or the most saving across the year. So, you know, there’s a system there for every homeowner, I suppose. It just depends on what they’re looking for.

[09:20] Alec – So would I be correct in saying that those who have batteries don’t tend to sell their energy back into the system?

[09:25] Brian – Exactly. So you tend to store the energy and use it yourself on site. There might be a little bit of spillage back to the grid, but not as much as if you had no batteries. but the advantage, I suppose, of that feed-in tariff now is that you don’t necessarily have to store the energy on site yourself. You can just use the grid as your battery, in a sense.

[09:45] Alec – Am I likely to have to have batteries on site and to be storing them?

[09:49] Brian – I would say less than 50% of our customers currently get batteries with their system, and it’s really since the feed-in tariff has come in that homeowners don’t probably see as much value in batteries anymore because they can export the excess electricity back to the grid and they get paid for it. So it’s not something that is essential, really, with your PV system anymore. But a lot of customers still would invest in batteries because, you know, you can store the energy yourself and use it later in the day. And doing so probably does give you the best saving across the lifespan of the system.

[10:23] Alec – So I suppose this is something that should be talked with, you know, with the rep when they call.

[10:28] Brian – Absolutely, absolutely. and we look at your usage, we look at your times, your home, and things like that, and we can advise. And sometimes it might even be as simple as, if you don’t have as many panels on the roof, it might not be an economically viable solution to add batteries. So, we can advise on all that.

[10:47] Alec – Let’s say the whole ESB network goes down. What is the effect of the system? Am I still up and running because I have my own electricity?

[10:55] Brian – No, that’s something that a lot of people think and would expect, and I understand why. But for safety reasons, it can’t, unfortunately. So when your power goes down, unfortunately, you’re in the dark, as same as everybody else. But as soon as the power comes on, the system will reboot, reset itself. You won’t have to do anything extra. It’ll just start running again in the background.

[11:14] Alec – In terms of the system itself, let’s say there’s an issue with the system and the system goes down, am I going to be totally in the dark as well?

[11:21] Brian – No, so I would say that PV systems are very reliable and they rarely need maintenance, very rarely. But if something is required, we have an in-house dedicated after-sales team for things like  that. So you can log a fault on our website or you can simply call our after-sales team for support.

[11:43] Alec – And I suppose a lot of these repairs can be done remotely because we talked about the system being monitored remotely as well.

[11:49] Brian – Absolutely. So we can log in, we can see exactly if the system is down, why it’s down, what’s going on. A lot of times it can be a very simple, something’s tripped and push it back up and away it goes and we can find out over the phone. But sometimes it needs someone to call and we have a dedicated team to do that as well.

[12:05] Alec – In terms of the panels themselves, how often do they need to be cleaned? Talk about that because I’m sure there’s a cost involved in that.

[12:11] Brian – Yeah, well, so I suppose the solar panels, they’re made of what they call a self-cleaning glass. Now that doesn’t mean that they’ll never need to be cleaned, but the grime and dirt builds up on them much slower and heavy rain will actually clear most of it away. But what we would see typically over a sort of a two to three year period, the performance will start to drop a little bit. So that’s when we’d advise them to get their panels cleaned. And a lot of window companies are actually got into cleaning solar panels now because cleaning a solar panel is realistically exactly like cleaning a window.

[12:43] Alec – All right, so we can have that done, and you’re saying once it’s done every couple of years, it’s fine?

[12:49] Brian – Yeah, you’re getting the most out of your system by doing it. You will have some people who’ll never get them clean, and their system will still work. It’s just, if you want to get the maximum return, you’re probably better off getting them cleaned every couple of years.

[13:00] Alec – In terms of the sort of parts of the system, what needs to be replaced, and how often do things need to be replaced?

[13:06] Brian – There’s no real parts in a PV system that you could say is… Like, there’s no part that gets used up and has to be replaced every two years or five years or anything like that. And the system is very reliable. There’s no real move in parts. So it’s only when a component actually fails that it would need to be replaced. The panels themselves come with a 25-year, performance guarantee. So their minimum life expectancy is 25 years. So no, to answer your question, there’s nothing really that needs to be replaced on a regular basis.

[13:35] Alec – So in terms of overall cost, what are we talking about in terms of repayment on my investment?

[13:41] Brian – So typically you’d be looking at between a five and seven year payback. And when you look at it, the minimum life expectancy of a solar PV system is 25 years. So once you’ve recouped your initial investment, you’re looking at 18 to 20 years of free electricity at a minimum.

[13:57] Alec – And can you add to that system as time goes on?

[14:00] Brian – Yeah, well, the PV systems are very flexible. So you could add extra panels in or you could add batteries to a system that maybe you bought originally with no batteries. So yeah, it’s great that way. The PV is a very flexible design. You can add in extra components for heat and water, for charging your car. There’s lots of different things you can do with a PV system.

[14:20] Alec – I suppose all that leaves me to ask is where can we find out more about all of this?

[14:24] Brian – Yeah, well, the best place always is to go to the website, so AEI.ie, but you can call us on 014433996 as well.

[14:34] Alec – A special thanks today to our guest Brian Gleeson, Head of Domestic Energy with Alternative Energy Ireland for coming into the studio and sharing so many valuable tips. If anything resonated with you in what we discussed, please reach out to us across all of the social media channels, the SME Business Show. Thank you for your company and please join us again soon.