Anyone heard of:

http://www.homesun.com

??

My parents have been looking into it, Ive been kept out the loop. As Im still receiving copies of emails sent to my fathers inbox, Ive finally found out the name of the scheme etc from an email that says we may indeed be eligible.

Decreased energy bills for free, or a small cost if your house isnt totally suitable...(£500 one off fee + £5 a month...compared to the thousands if you didnt do the scheme), can only be a good thing. They appear to get their money back by getting the Feed in tariff. So, the client gets money off their bills by not needing as much money out of the grid...whilst homesun gets the money from the energy that goes into the grid.

On the face of it it seems like a great idea, as there are many people like us who cant afford the initial cost of setting up a system, despite the long term benefits. I can only wonder though...households like us likely will use all the energy the panels produce (and more)...theres likely a catch...such as the fact that households will be using most energy at night/evenings when the panels arent producing energy, so bills arent reduced that much as the household will be using the grid mostly, and during the day people are out, the panels producing energy into the grid, and homesun reap the benefits.

Its also a 25 year scheme...what happens if/when you want to sell your house...will you need to buy out of the scheme or something?

Thoughts?

Personally I wouldnt bother with any type of scheme like this a lot can change in 25 years, including energy prices. The cost of panels will reduce over time, look at how fast technology turns over. Why buy into yesterdays technology today and pay for it tomorrow? Theres always a new scheme around the corner, or a more efficent and cheaper design of an existing model.

Personally I wouldnt bother with any type of scheme like this a lot can change in 25 years, including energy prices. The cost of panels will reduce over time, look at how fast technology turns over. Why buy into yesterdays technology today and pay for it tomorrow? Theres always a new scheme around the corner, or a more efficent and cheaper design of an existing model.

Thats actually a good point. I was reading an article the other day about a research lab somewhere that has figured out a way to increase the purity of silicon through the reheating of old/waste silicon components.
The article said something about this leading to a huge increase in the efficiency of solar panels and reduction in their cost at the same time.

There was an article in New Scientist a few years ago by Bjorn Lomborg (Sp?) - an economist/environmentalist skeptic. I rebelled a little and referenced it in an environmental law exam. Basically at some point he mentioned the fact that in Sweden or some other scandinavian country where there was a massive push to get everyone on solar, the cost, both economic and environmental (in terms of resources needed) was a mistake, as 5 years later the tech meant that had they waited, things would have been much cheaper and more efficient.

However if you wait like that, its like anything, you HAVE to buy into it at some point, else youll just end up waiting for each new release of a tech only to decide to wait for the next.

As to the 2 different models (free and 500 installation), I dont doubt for a second that homesun will be making 99.9% of people pay the £500...but even then this is much much cheaper than doing it off your own back.

The added bonus is whether we pay for damage...we live next to a primary school playing field and this year I caught a bunch of the kids throwing things at our windows during their lunch break (they havent done it since   ) But I dont doubt for a second the reason we occasionally get poor satellite reception is down to the kids throwing things on the dish that overlooks the field. Annoyingly the panels would face the field too, but if Homesun maintains it all etc, thats a bonus for us...