The unique challenge for commercial clients is not so much about feed-in tariffs. It is more about offsetting their existing consumption. And with that, you need a panel that's able to deliver every single day with very little downtime. And second, most commercial clients are not in it for the short haul, they're in it for the long haul. Which means even if they have to pay more for a panel or more for the system, they will gladly do that provided they know that the levelised cost of electricity for them is below other competitors.

With commercial properties that are looking for solar businesses in particular, what they are looking for is a certainty in what their power costs are going to be over a period of X number of years. They're also looking at what is their return on investment on a quality product, as opposed to a cheaper product. The return on investment, probably a couple of years more or even three or four years more than a cheaper product. However, when you look at the lifespan of the product and what you're hoping to achieve at the end of that, the answer is pretty evident, once you do the math on it. At the end of the day for businesses, what they're looking for is profitability in the long run. And if this contributes towards long-term profitability and gain, it's a no-brainer for them.


One of the things that we have been able to do is when we look at the cost of power over the lifespan of the product, what we assume as the lifespan of the product is the time that the product is actually warranted for manufacturing defects or failures, not a performance warranty, but an actual warranty on that. We use that as the timeframe for that. And what we find is we offer one of the lowest costs of electricity and usually with commercial clients, once they've decided that that is important for them, they don't flinch. At this stage, it is actually very easy to say that every customer that we've ever come across have been happy customers. They've been happy customers because they've chosen the right product, we've put a good product on, we've done a good job of putting it on, and we've maintained that relationship with customers. We've had a lot of repeat ones and it is key to being successful in environment like this.