I wish I got it earlier. After so much pain and suffering.
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Has anybody else signed up with gosolr? Those who signed up, are you all still happy?
I’ve been referring people to them left, right and center, but my sister and one friend has said that they’ve received no response to their queries.
We’ve been very happy since signing up in August last year. I did find that emailing them directly got a response quicker than using the contact form on their website. Also with the load shedding being so bad recently they’re probably getting a ton of inquiries and I think their sales staff don’t cope and let some inquiries slip through.
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Saw people on twitter complaining about gosolr not getting back to them also.
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Got interested and gave them a call. Apparently they are inundated with contact request through the website which most of the time never realize into a dale, so they give priority to emails and calls coming in. So if you want to contact them, give them a call or send an email directly.
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Cool, I’ve passed your message along.
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Submitted an online application to them via a referral link last week. Was contacted via email on Tuesday to submit some additional info and documents and then an automated invoice for the admin fee on Wednesday. Currently waiting on that to be processed (I assume) before an inspection will be scheduled. Haven’t spoken to anyone directly yet. If we haven’t had any update by mid-week next week then I will start the phone calls.
Allied to that, I personally know of at least three other families who, completely independently, have all started investigating getting GoSolr installations in the last three weeks. I have no doubt that they’re currently being inundated with new applications. There’s definitely scope for a competitor to step up, but GoSolr is the only company I’ve heard of doing the solar rental thing. Didn’t even bother investigating others based on the positive stuff about them in this thread. Those early adopters obviously got in at the right time. Us slow to act folks are probably not going to get the same level of service.
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I think there are, but I don’t think they’re as cheap. Some of them work with the banks which works out much more expensive, but then you own the system at the end of it all.
For gosolr, on their cheap system of R1580 per month (which should cost about R120k if you just had it installed and paid for outright), I don’t know what the annual increases look like, but at R1580 per month, they’re looking at about 8 years before hitting ROI.
I’ve pretty much been referring people exclusively to gosolr and to the guy that did my installation (for those who want to buy it outright). But given the above, the renting option makes a lot of sense, especially for people who can’t or don’t want to borrow against their home.
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They’ve updated their home page regarding wait times:
Annoyed that they do Nelspruit, but apparently not Witbank… Gonna attempt to sign up to see what happens.
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Seems me wanting to follow our municipality regulations is a bit of a sore point for the Solar installers here on my end, and I might struggle to find someone to actually do the job while complying with the NERSA regulations.
yay me for obeying the law
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Cape town ? I know here you have a lot of paper work to do and if you skip it you are fined quite heavily.
Supposedly a way to know of there are live wires when grid is down then they are aware of grid tied systems able to power the lines and be harmful to workers.
Personally I see it as just another tax to pay. But rather get your paperwork in order and not have to worry, they have drones flying to spot new installations and then they come knocking for their cut.
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Eastern Cape…so people DO tend to ignore regulations and bylaws without consequence…but yea, i have a mate that works at municipality warning me of these regulations, and when i brought it up with the current guy who we want to do the installation, he seemed to get aggressive and defensive and basically said nah now he rather not even get involved if im the type to just comply.
Even though all it seems to be is a form you fill out, and the approval largely depends on your system type IF you’re wanting to feed back into the grid and get a tariff (coz then you’d need a different meter and they’d need to know about you). If you just wanna “adjust” your existing stuff and never feed back, its simply a form to fill out letting them no.
but no, that was enough to piss off the guy enough for him to say he’s out.
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Yeah if you don’t toe in to sell back it is just a formality. For selling you need to buy a special meter with install , about 15 to 20k.
Hence few people do it for the half a cent you get for selling.
But otherwise just the paperwork now and does help as you need it for most insurance companies as well.
Rather stick to proper installers and not a fly by night company, especially since some of the items catty 10 to 15 year warranties.
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City of Cape Town once again leading the way on how things should be done.
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GoSolr guys will probably need to check their contracts.
https://twitter.com/dwaine_van/status/1617874862168768513
Hmm, its not showing. I’ll paste the relevant bit.
Be careful with your GoSolr contracts tho - last I read them in my evaluation process, they own the rights to any extra Watts you generate that your house doesn’t need.
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Interesting. If that would be the case I wouldn’t pursue feeding into the grid unless there was some incentive. Guess we’ll see how things play out for people in the Cape when it becomes a possibility.
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In all fairness, that actually makes sense. They technically own the system so if there is any money to be made from it, it would make sense that they get it given the low price of their contracts.
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In thinking about it, it may also be a clause to protect them from someone using the rental for commercial purposes, while GoSolr has to keep it maintained. Not to say that this is a feasible or likely thing to happen but often with the legal clauses it’s a case of covering all your bases.
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To follow up on this…
Have just had our installation date confirmed by the GoSolr assigned installers.
As I mentioned last week, I applied online two weeks ago (Sat 14th), including uploading some documents through the desktop site. Was then contacted on the Tuesday via email to submit some additional documents (we are setting billing up through the company) and received and paid the admin fee invoice the next day.
Sent them a “we’ve paid the invoice and not heard anything since” email on Tuesday this week. And then got contacted (again via email) by the installer around midday yesterday. Our installation start date was confirmed with them this morning.
The process did seem a little slow and unresponsive at times, but probably partly because of my frustration with load shedding and partly because of their flood of new applications. I have been told that calling them directly does seem to work a bit better, and I was getting ready to call today if it hadn’t been for getting the installation date message yesterday.
So, it’s been a two week process for us so far. It’s all been done online and via email. If they meet our installation date (22 February) and all goes smoothly with that, it will have been the 6-week process I was expecting.
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not bad. with everyone getting solar most solar guys do not respond in a timely manner.
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