When friends of ours told us that they had solar panels put in by Harrisons my husband got very excited whereas I was very dubious as we had looked at panels with battery some years earlier and decided that the technology wasn’t quite worth us investing that amount of money yet. When Steve came along to talk to us I was fairly negative until he mentioned these things.
One.. the warranty on the panels Ross was interested in was 25 years and two... there was a deal going that meant we could pay them off over a 4 year interest free period. I quickly did the maths and decided that it was affordable as our power bill should reduce substantially if I set the never before used timers on my appliances to come on at different times of the day when the sun should be shining.
As we were going into autumn winter my crock pot was hauled out of the cupboard and the recipes books put to use again. I felt like an old time pioneer harnessing the power of nature to do my work for me. Our friends living in the same town as us have not paid a power bill in 4 months as they are low power users and the power they generate in the late summer/autumn season is enough to cover even their daily power charge. We however are much higher users with teenagers, ventilation units in the ceiling, two fridges and I do a lot of cooking and baking. We will never be zero use; we live in Taranaki after all with those cold winter nights.
Harrisons made it very easy, explaining things carefully to an electricity challenged homeowner. The installation was done well and Sharon provides excellent after sales advice and service. She is like your new best friend, always so happy to hear from you. Interestingly I spent more on the panels than I intended to because I decided to go for a type that is able to produce more on low light days and looking at the weather we have had this week and comparing our production with our friends ( they chose the original option) our power production is much higher than theirs. It's a little bit like when is the best time to plant a tree. The answer is always “yesterday”. There will always be a more classy, more economical, more technologically savvy system coming along tomorrow . I’m glad we bought ours in April and got on with it.
Lovely people to work with. Were very patient and explained things well and were available for after sales advice.