A string down
One row of panels stops contributing. The rest keeps working, so nothing looks broken. On the bill it takes weeks to show. In the data it shows on day one.
Your installation, watched every day
Installing takes a day. Producing takes many years. We look at your installation’s data daily and, if something drifts or maintenance is due, we contact you. Before you notice it on the bill.
What we watch
Your installation’s daily production, compared with what it should be delivering given its size, its orientation and the weather. That comparison is what gives away the silent faults: the ones that switch nothing off, but cost you money day after day.
A solar panel does not warn you when it fails. It makes no noise, it does not drip, no light comes on in the house. The only way to know something is wrong is to compare what it produces with what it should produce. That is what we do, every day, for every installation we have fitted.
What a typical anomaly looks like
Three common faults that take a long time to show on the bill and show up straight away in the data.
The inverter stopped
The inverter turns what the panels generate into the current your house uses. If it stops, production drops to zero even in full sun. It is the fault most visible in the data, and the most expensive one to miss.
Degraded production
The system produces, but less than it should. Dirt, a new shadow, a failing connector. A sustained shortfall, however small, always has a cause.
Monitoring is not the same as maintenance
Monitoring means reading the data and spotting the problem. Maintenance means acting on it: cleaning, inspecting, repairing. Daily monitoring decides when maintenance is actually needed, so you do not pay for scheduled work your installation does not require.
Cleaning: when it pays and when it does not
Rain washes away a good part of the dirt. Cleaning pays when the data says dirt is costing you production: dust from nearby building work, pollen, soil in country areas, bird droppings. Cleaning out of habit, without the data calling for it, can cost more than it recovers.
Inspecting the installation
Connections, mountings, electrical protections and the state of the inverter. It gets inspected when it is due and when the data flags something odd. If someone needs to go up on the roof, we are the ones who tell you, with the reason in front of you.
The trade sells and disappears. We stay
A good part of the trade installs, gets paid and never comes back. Many owners in this area, foreign residents among them, bought their system from a company that no longer answers the phone. An installation with nobody behind it can spend months producing below what it should without anyone noticing. We come from monitoring industrial plants: watching that something keeps producing is our engineering trade, not a sales extra.
That is why monitoring is not a separate service sold at the end. It is the third of the three promises we work by: we do it properly, we make it legal and we stay.
Following your production daily involves processing data. It is set out in the contract and in our privacy policy.
Frequently asked questions about monitoring
Do I have to keep an eye on an app myself?
No. You can look at your production whenever you like, but watching it is our job. If something drifts, we are the ones who contact you.
How often do the panels need cleaning?
There is no fixed schedule. Rain does a good part of the work. Panels get cleaned when the data shows dirt is costing you production. That way you do not pay for cleaning you do not need.
Do the panels work during a power cut?
No, unless you have a battery with backup capability. For safety, the installation shuts itself down when the grid goes down, so it does not feed current into a line someone is repairing.
What if my system was installed by another company?
Tell us about it. The first step is to see what condition it is in and whether it is legalised. We look at each case and tell you what can be done.
Does monitoring have a cost?
You get the terms in writing along with the study, before you sign anything. No small print.
What do you do with my production data?
We use it to watch your installation, nothing else. The processing is set out in the contract and in our privacy policy.
Want to know whether your roof produces what it should?
Ask for your study. We tell you what your roof can deliver, in writing and signed by an engineer. And once it is up and running, we are the ones watching it.