Get Quotes from Solarquotes

browser on 09/01/2025 - 11:36

Anyone has good experience on getting quotes from Solarquotes (now owned by Origin Energy)?

Their website doesn't explain if you can get more than 3 quotes or how they select the 3 installers. I know they earn a referral fee from the installers, but it just gets factored into the cost of business, so it's not really free-free.

Also, they have already published the installers, what benefit is there to go through SQ than contacting the top rated installers directly?

I know this is a way to support the website in the past, but now it is part of a multi-billion dollar company, it is in good hands, financially.

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Comments

  • Jetkuma on 09/01/2025 - 11:45
    +3

    I recently obtained 3 quotes from them. I used that as a benchmark. I contacted few others companies to compare price and asked for further discount. After that, I just asked each one of them if they can beat that price.

  • Jolakot on 09/01/2025 - 13:36

    SolarQuotes get paid $55 from each company it sends the request to, whether you actually end up using them or not. Sounds like a lot, but honestly not that far off how much it costs to do your own SEO (small fortune to get your website in the first 2-3 results on Google) or advertising, so you're paying that cost per lead regardless.

    They apparently have some proprietary algorithm that matches you based on the installer's preferences, availability and location; like if you have a 2-story house with terracotta tiles in Tarneit, they'll match you with local installers that have invested in the equipment and training for it, rather than an installer from Frankston that will have to rent equipment and take their time with an unfamiliar job.

    In theory this is meant to give you the best price, because you'll be getting a 'standard' install no matter what your setup is, so the installer has more confidence to give you a reasonable quote without adding padding for uncertainty or travel.

    Personally, I found the quotes to be pretty reasonable, with one quote being absolutely ridiculous (they wanted $5500, I ended up paying $3200). Didn't end up using any of them as I found a better deal through ozbargain with Cerium Energy, but was good to work out a baseline price.

  • netjock on 09/01/2025 - 13:51
    +2

    I got a quote from them. All 3 had their preference of equipment therefore you can't really compare them. In addition they were $2k higher than who I ended up going with (and it wasn't a bottom of the barrel deal but just had the equipment I know and trust).

    Good indicator of what is out there but for those who have some clue might not be the best option.

    Most of the case the cost is down to what they think they can get for the STC for the panels and labour cost of installation.

    Panels (Jinkos and equivalent budget brands) + inverters (Goodwe, Sungrow etc) should be pretty standard pricing. Sometimes they do just give you a quote with a single price which masks everything but luckily I the final one I went with itemised items and a 6.6kw single story concrete tiles they actually made $2.5k for a 4hr job (3 guys turned up). Inverter was slightly more expensive then you can find online but it is how it goes down very hard to decouple items unfortunately.

  • serpserpserp on 09/01/2025 - 14:09

    I used Solarquotes and ended up going with Lightning Energy. They were one of the highest ranked providers at the time and weren't cheap by any means. I ended up haggling a 10% discount but they were super reluctant to move on their price and I had to provide a bunch of exact quotes that undercut them. They said all these other people were start ups or recent entrants to the market, which is true, and some will go out of business within 12 months while others might survive. I ended up going with them in case I had warranty issues down the track. I also liked that they didn't sub-contract the work. The guys did a 9/10 job on the install. A little careless with some of the rubbish/offcuts/bits of broken tile going into my gutters. Overall happy with the experience, but I do wonder if I would have had a similar result with another provider that was 25 to 33% cheaper!

  • browser on 09/01/2025 - 14:21

    Sounds like it is good to get quotes from SQ anyway, if not going ahead, at least they serve as baselines.

    Since SQ gets paid just by referring, it doesn't matter who you go with at the end. It matters to the installers if they keep receiving quote requests but no actual installs to follow.

    I guess the installers can reject quote requests and not pay, then they will go to the next installers.

  • knasty on 09/01/2025 - 14:37

    I used them 6 years ago. Was happy with the service at that time.

  • browser on 09/01/2025 - 14:39

    I wonder if it makes sense to get a battery now or later.

    (+) battery incentive
    (+) presumably cheaper to install new with solar than retrofit
    (-) will take a long time to break even due to high cost
    (-) likely to install more panels than needed leading to higher cost

    Guess it's difficult to predict self-efficiency vs import from grid. If import is low after installing solar, then adding a battery is not going to save much more.

    Currently leaning towards wait and see in a couple of years, by then price of battery may come down, but incentive may not be there.

    • pegaxs on 09/01/2025 - 16:15
      +1

      For a house battery, you are half way in price to getting an EV car… The car battery will also be about 3 to 4 times bigger than a house battery (10~15kWh home vs. about 60kWh for a car.) and come with the added bonus that you can get in your "storage battery" and drive it around…

      The government has just released that they will be allowing V2G set ups, and for my money, I would not buy a "home battery" that did not come with a 4 wheels and a steering wheel.

      • browser on 09/01/2025 - 16:58
        +1

        Logical thinking, but V2H/V2G is likely to wear out the car battery quicker, assuming chemistry in use is not optimised for bi-directional charging.

        • pegaxs on 09/01/2025 - 18:15
          +2

          And you think charging a house battery up and draining it isnt going to wear the house battery out?

          And you are talking about a car battery that has the ability to dump a days worth of household usage just to accelerate up to 100km/h. Using a car battery to power a house is the least stressful thing it can do. Using up 5~10kWh of a car battery to run a house over 24 hours is nothing. An EV will use more electicity to drive 100km than what a household would consume in an average day.

          Driving an EV can pull anywhere up to about 400+amps if you stomp your foot… you think it cares about your home pulling less than 50amps? On a good day, with the ducted AC going flat out, my house pulls about 8~9kW, or about 33 to 37amps. My EV will pull about 100kW just accelerating up to speed. At 100km/h, my EV uses about 17kW/h or about double what my whole house pulls on a hot day with the AC running flat out.

          I wouldn't be too worried about what goes on with the car battery connected to the house. It's low load work for a car battery.

  • atwilliams on 09/01/2025 - 16:12
    +1

    I think there is value in using SQ, purely as they have "weeded out" poor quality installers and identified those that install in your area. Whilst I am an OzB fan, be careful focusing purely on price with solar. Poor quality / poorly matched solar components, or poor installation will have you "paying" for years in terms of under performance of your system.

    I'd do some research to understand the solar systems sizes / components and likely costs (SQ is good for this as well), then use SQ to get your 3 quotes (no obligation to use any of them), but go through the quotes in detail to understand what you are getting and why the installer is recommending certain components. (I did a call / in-person chat with the installer rep for this)

    When I went through this process, several recommendations kept coming up which may be relevant for you:

    • Understand your power consumption (how much and when)

    • Install more panels that you think you need (if you can afford it & your roof can take them) - panels are relatively cheap, but difficult / costly to retrofit afterwards, e.g you add a battery later.

    • With solar feed in rebates being so low these days, the idea is to cover your day time power usage (to give you an economic payback), using the grid at night.

    • Batteries still don't make economic sense (but prices are coming down year-on-year, with new sodium ion technology on the horizon). There are of course other benefits from batteries if you are not focused on the cost.

    • Make sure the inverter allows a battery to be added afterwards (although I found that often batteries and inverters need to be from the same manufacturer - some exceptions)

    • System performance varies considerable depending on where you are located and factors like whether you have any shading (from trees, other buildings) on your roof. Make sure your installer has done enough due diligence on your home to understand this and the impact on system performance.

    Best of luck. Don't rush this decision.

    • browser on 10/01/2025 - 12:26

      Thanks for the tips.

      I have received interval data from the last 2 years, plotted Dec/2023 to Nov/2024 to cover 4 seasons, does not look too good to build a case, not without major shift in activities.

      Very roughly and without considering weather changes, solar may help to reduce 900-1,000kWh import from the grid, about $300 a year.

  • merriweather on 09/01/2025 - 16:47

    The info on the site is pretty useful if it's all new to you and you want to get a lay of the land. In terms of the quotes, they just come from three random businesses in your area that you could probably just as easily find with a quick google.

  • cohagen on 09/01/2025 - 21:40

    I started my solar journey recently and used SolarQuotes as my souce of info and even watched a couple of Finn's youtube videos to learn more. I ended up getting matched with a great installer through his site, got my 13.2kW system up and running and have been enjoying free aircon over the holiday period :) great experience.

  • browser on 11/01/2025 - 17:44

    Since we use a lot more power in Summer, and summer is halfway through, we aren't going to get the full benefit to rush into solar now. Will wait for the next bill for more data points.

    At this moment probably no go with solar, numbers don't add up.

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