Freelance audio journalist and producer Sharon Davis made a serious start on getting quotes for solar PV a couple of years ago – but the process was so daunting even she gave up.“I actually put out some feelers about solar power to particular people, to installers, and I got inundated with emails,” Sharon told us. “And I couldn’t make sense of a lot of what they were saying, and I didn’t know who to trust.”
With some regret, Sharon gave up until, mid last year, she saw an ad for one of Inner West Community Energy’s Solar Information Nights, at Gasoline Pony, Marrickville.
Sharon, a distinguished former ABC radio journalist of 30 years’ service, and her partner Geoff Parish, a former radio and TV journalist with both the ABC and SBS, came along, listened to the presentations and – like the good journalists they are! – asked lots of questions.
“Your input, your group’s input,was absolutely incredible,” Geoff says. “It made us scoot right through the process. Without that we might still be trying to figure out who to go with. There’s no two ways about that.”
Inner West Community Energy reviewed Sharon and Geoff’s needs and their budget, then put them in touch with one of our preferred solar installers, Paul Hutt of Brightside Solar and Electrical.
As you can see, their roof – in Cavendish St, Stanmore – was not an easy one for solar, like so many in the Inner West, but they’ve now got a 5.89 kilowatt system, comprising 19 QCells panels and a Solar Edge inverter.
The system was completed on November 8 but despite doing everything required by his power company, DC Power, the meter has still not been configured to allow him to earn the correct solar feed-in tariff. He’s expecting another meter company to visit next Tuesday to fix it. Here’s hoping.
Fortunately, Sharon and Geoff know how much solar power they’ve generated so they know how much DC Power owes them since November 8 from power that’s been fed into the grid.
And why did they want to go solar? The usual reasons, really. They had to wait till they could afford it, and when they could, rising electricity prices were a major reason, as well as the ability to do something positive for the climate. “We really felt we should pitch in on the environmental front, to get away from the big coal burners,” Geoff says.
If you live in the Inner West and want to attend our next solar information night, we’ll be holding one in late March. Message us here and we’ll let you know when the venue and date has been finalised. We’ll be posting the details here and on Eventbrite next week.
Gavin Gilchrist: Project Manager