When you're purchasing a solar system, you've really got to start with finding a good quality installer, that's the key thing. It's a very long-term investment that you're making here and not a cheap one. You're spending anywhere from $6,000 to $10,000 on a solar system, and maybe the same again for a battery. So it's certainly important that you find someone that's local, someone that's got experience, someone that's done lots of installations in your area because they'll make an assessment of your current bills, your house and all of these things. It's quite a complex purchasing decisions, so you really need to find an installer that you trust to help you through that process.
So when we go to see customers in their home, we have a look at their electricity bill first and foremost, and that tells us how much electricity they're using each day and also gives us an idea of what the seasonal differences are, whether you're using more in summer or more on winter. We also have a look at things like major appliances, like what their hot water system is, what their air conditioning system looks like. And from there we can sort of identify, what size system the customer would need to purchase or what would suit them. We also think forward, so it's not just about what you're using in the home today, it's about other things that you might be considering adding to the home in the future. You might not have air conditioning, for example, you might be wanting to put it in, so we factor that into our assessment of the energy needs. Electric vehicles, for example, are coming and some people are considering that as their next purchase for a car, so we consider that as well.
Ultimately, no one ever comes to me and wishes they had gone smaller, they always wished they had gone bigger. So we certainly oversize systems, so there's a little bit of headroom there, a little bit of extra capacity, so that as people renovate, make adjustments to their home, there's extra capacity there. So we certainly don't install the systems and then leave the customer and forget about them. We're there to support them if there's issues, we're there on the phone, if they need to ask us questions about their bills. So we really believe in supporting customer through the entire process and that extends to their experience post sale.
Why should you pick a high quality installer to customise a solar power system for your home?
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