Thinking about solar or a battery for your premises or your new house? I work for you, not the installer: I work out what you need, get like-for-like quotes, check the contract and make sure what gets built is what you paid for.
- How much you actually use, hour by hour, and what size makes sense
- Roof, structure and grid connection checked before anyone quotes
- A common specification, then the quotes managed for you
- Quotes compared on the same basis, in one table
- Finished system inspected against what was promised
For a new roof, a boiler or an extension you would expect someone independent to specify the work and check it was done properly. Solar and batteries are a twenty-five-year asset that often costs more than any of those, and almost nobody has that person. On larger projects the role is called the owner’s engineer. This is the same thing, scaled to a house, an office, a workshop or a farm.
The stages, and what each costs
1. What do you actually need? £450. Your electricity use, hour by hour, from bills or a smart-meter export, against what a system on your roof or land would produce. The number that matters is how much of the generation you would use yourself, because exported units are worth a fraction of displaced ones. This is where most schemes are won or lost, and almost no quote does it.
2. Is the building and the connection ready? £500. Whether the roof can take the load and how much life it has left, whether the electrical supply and the local network will allow what you want, and what has to happen first.
3. A common specification and quote management. £600. A one-page specification that every installer prices against, so the quotes that come back can be compared on the same basis instead of three different systems with three different assumptions. I send it out, field the installers’ questions, chase the returns, and give you a comparison table and a recommendation.
4. The contract. From £350, by page count. Performance promises, warranties, what maintenance includes and excludes, and what happens if it underperforms, read by an engineer before you sign. This stage is the Contract and Lease Check, priced the same way whether you buy it alone or as part of a project.
5. Was it built as promised? £500 plus travel. A visit after installation to check what was built against the quote, the specification and the drawings: the inverter, battery, isolators and cabling in the plant room or loft, what can be seen of the array from ground level, the commissioning paperwork, and the monitoring you will rely on for the next twenty-five years. I do not go onto sloped roofs; for roof-level checks I use the installer’s own photographs or arrange a drone survey separately. This stage is for systems installed through stages 1 to 3. For a system that has been running for a while, the Health Check is the right service.
How it is delivered
Most clients take the whole sequence: all five stages for £2,250, which includes a contract check of up to 25 pages and the post-installation visit within 50 miles of Glasgow. Stage 1 on its own, before you ask anyone for a quote, is the most common starting point. Some take a single stage, most often stage 1 before they ask for quotes, or stage 5 when something feels wrong after installation. Each stage is a fixed fee agreed in writing before it starts, and I will tell you which stages your project does not need.
I have no relationship with any installer and take no commission from anyone. The recommendation is the same whoever ends up doing the work.
People often ask
Why not just trust the installer? They are the experts.
Good installers are experts at installing. But the person quoting the job is also the person who benefits if you say yes, and the system they propose is shaped by what they stock and how they price. That is not dishonest, it is structural.
For a new roof or a boiler replacement you would expect someone independent to specify the work and check it was done properly. Solar is a twenty-five-year asset that often costs more than either, and almost nobody has that person. I am that person.
I have an installation contract or a roof lease to sign. Can you look at it?
Yes. I am not a lawyer and do not give legal advice; what I do is read the technical clauses that solicitors tend to skip, such as how the performance promise is tested, what counts as a fault and what the maintenance excludes, and tell you what they will do in practice. See the contract and lease check.
Other services
Not sure where to start? That is what the first call is for.
Most enquiries begin with a fifteen-minute conversation and a look at whatever you already have: a quote, a screenshot of your monitoring app, a contract, your bills. If the honest answer is that you do not need me, I will say so, and it costs you nothing.