Quote and buying

• Get a quote fast
• Competitive pricing
• Project finalisation could do with extra detail

The Boxt Solar installation process starts with the website and a super-quick quotation process. Just tap in your postcode, select your home using the satellite image, and answer a few basic questions about the house and roof type, and you get a basic quote through.

This basic quotation makes an initial assumption about the number of solar panels you can have, and gives you a choice over the number and type of batteries you might want. 

It’s remarkably quick. Having been thinking about getting solar installed for some time, I’ve been through the quotation process with several other providers in the past, and in many cases have had to wait for a final quote.

Even where I have had a quote instantly elsewhere, the price was higher and Boxt, as it is for its boiler service, is hugely competitive.

This initial quote process does highlight some of the restrictions of Boxt’s service. For starters, the company doesn’t support flat roofs. Depending on which way your house is orientated, that could be an issue.

For example, I live in a Victorian terraced house, and have had a loft conversion, so the back part of the roof is all flat. Fortunately, the front of my house is pretty much due south, which is ideal for solar; however, my neighbours over the road with loft conversions would find that their south-facing roofs are all flat, so not suitable for solar with Boxt.

There’s an argument for my house to use the flat roof for increased solar capacity, although that wouldn’t be possible with Boxt. I do get why this decision has been made. Installing solar on a flat roof is more complicated, so it’s harder to give an instant quote for and would make the system more complicated.

If you do have a lot of flat roof that you want to use, then Boxt isn’t for you, and you’ll want to talk to a more specialist company that can offer this kind of installation.

Next, from the installation process, you’ll see that the choice of components is relatively small. You can have a Sunsynk hybrid inverter only, rated to match the size of your array.

Then there’s a choice of just Sunsynk batteries (up to three 5.3kWh), or a Tesla PowerWall 3 13.5kWh.

While the choice is limited, Boxt has at least taken highly-rated products, well-suited to the jobs. The Sunsynk 3.6kW Ecco Hybrid Inverter that was quoted for my system is compact and rated for up to 7000W of DC input, with a constant 3.6kWh output and support for batteries. Likewise, the companies batteries are highly specced.

While the choice may be low, focusing on a few key components makes the process simple and helps keep the price down.

It’s the same with the solar panels, which are all AIKO NEOSTART S3 Mono-Glass panels. These are highly rated panels, and Boxt will update to the best available. When I got my first quote, it was for 460W panels, but before installation, they were upgraded to 475W panels at no extra cost. 

I decided not to opt for a battery: working at home all day, I tend to use a lot of electricity throughout the day; I don’t have a huge amount of space to put a battery; and the relatively small footprint of my roof limits the size of array I can have and, therefore, how much spare power there is to charge a battery. Whether or not a battery is right for you will depend on your installation and how much power you generate.

Overall, the system came in at £4699 for five panels and no battery (with buy one get one free on the solar panels, and bird protection), which is great value. Pricing and offers do change quite regularly, but this gives you an idea of the cost.

A quote includes the full installation cost, with scaffolding, and there’s a two-year workmanship guarantee covered. All installations come with an HIES deposit guarantee, which protects your deposit should the installer cease trading before work is completed.

Before installation can go ahead, you need to provide images of your home, including the roof, and inside and outside areas. You then have a call to confirm your selection and what can be done on your house.

It’s at this point that you need to think about where to put everything. If you’ve got a garage or side wall with plenty of space on a path, using that space probably makes sense; if not, then you’ll need space for the inverter and battery. Both can go outside, but it’s important to clarify where you’d like them to go.

As mentioned, I didn’t go for a battery, so I needed space for the inverter only, which I wanted on my external wall, to the left of the bay window. I did feel as though this process could do with a bit more information and, perhaps, some photos of what an installed inverter looks like in a typical house (inside and out) for size reasons.

I was told that I needed space for the inverter, but regulations mean that you need isolation switches, and you may need an additional consumer input for the incoming feed. Where you want all of this stuff should be considered before installation.

During the call, there’s a confirmation of how many solar panels you can have. There’s no site visit, so satellite photos and images of neighbouring properties are used as a guide. In my case, my next-door neighbour already has solar, with six panels, so that was used as a guide.

I was told that potentially it would be five panels rather than six, due to the size of the panel that Boxt uses. That’s fine, as there’s only so much physical space, but at this point it would have been useful if I had been sent a quote for both a five- and six-panel system.

That’s particularly important, as the quote gives you a breakdown of how much electricity you will likely generate over the year, as well as how long it will take the system to pay itself off.

It’s a detailed report, but there is a difference between having five and six panels, and it’s good to have all of the information to hand. I say this more as a piece of information: if you start going through a quote with Boxt, just make sure you ask for additional quotes if there’s a chance you’ll end up with fewer solar panels than you first thought.

What I can say is that the report generated is thorough. It uses average data based from across the UK, based on the orientation of your roof, and makes it easier to make an informed decision based on your home. 

I’m lucky in that my roof is almost directly south-facing, so about as good as you’ll get. If your house has an east- or west-facing roof, then you’ll get less direct sun, so you’ll generate less power and it will take longer to pay back. 

In all cases, solar is a long-term investment. For my house, the system is estimated to take 11 years to pay back, paying up front. If you want to take finance, then the report lets you select three, five or 10 year finance options to see the difference in payback time and savings. 

Having all of this to hand makes it much easier to make an informed decision. With any solar installation, it’s well worth analysing the data to make sure the system is worth it.

Assuming everything aligns and you’re happy with the quote, then the installation can be booked in. Boxt, like other solar installers are busy, but it shouldn’t take more than a few weeks until a slot is available.

Installation

• Professional, clean installation
• Make sure you’re very clear where everything will go

Installation is via one of Boxt’s teams. There’s good communication, with clear information on when the scaffolding will go up and come back down, and when the installation team will be on site, turning up with the solar panels, inverter and, if you ordered, a battery.

My scaffolding went up a few days before the planned installation. It was done neatly and professionally, and it was securely fastened to a stable work platform for the solar team to work on. As an aside, it was also useful to get up to the roof and sort out the very dirty gutters!

On installation day, the team arrived on time and were great: friendly, polite and easy to deal with. The first thing mentioned was that the six panels I’d ordered wouldn’t fit, so it would have to be five panels.

This is something that a site visit would have confirmed immediately. And, if I’d have had the five-panel quote, I would have had more information on whether to progress or not. I still would have gone ahead, but finding out on the day that I was effectively one panel down wasn’t ideal, and a bit more communication from Boxt pre-installation would have been good.

As the team had a spare solar panel, this was left at the end of installation, and needed to be collected separately. I left the panel outside (it’s too big to fit in my home) and found out a few days later that the collection hadn’t been arranged; a quick online chat with the help team fixed it.

Back to the installation, the job on the roof was immaculate. Many solar installations use mounting bars for the panels. Depending on the number and orientation of the panels, this can mean the ends of the bars stick out. Boxt uses individual mounts for each panel, that clamp under the tiles.

This gives a much neater finish winothing sticking out from the sides of the panels.

Likewise, the bird proofing is very neat. Rather than using a mesh, which a bird could get its foot caught in, Boxt uses vertical bits of metal, which feels safer, while stopping pigeons from getting under the panels.

I can’t say how important it is to opt for the bird proofing. My neighbours originally had their system installed without, and pigeons got under it, with red mites making their way into their home, so they retrospectively added it. Avoid this and make sure you have bird proofing from the start.

The rest of the installation was done with precision and neatness, and I like the way that the cables on the roof where tucked under the tiles to keep them out of site. Sure, I was always going to end up with some cables running down the front of the house, but where cables could be hidden, they were.

There are a few more components to think about. An extra consumer unit was required, which can go inside or out.

I went for an outside installation, with a neat weatherproof box on the wall. Regulations require that an isolator switch is installed below this, which is fine: this switch is a bit ugly, but a pot-plant in front of it hides the switch, while still giving easy access to it.

My inverter was installed at head height, even though I had asked the pre-installation team to keep it as low as possible. Where the scaffolding was prevented a lower fitting at the time of installation.

Beneath the inverter, there was another strip of cabling with another isolator. Again, this is because of regulations. With the scaffolding up, the inverter wasn’t too visible; with the scaffolding down, the first thing you could see when walking past my house was an inverter, its red and green lights on the Wi-Fi module (please, smart home manufacturers, stop putting lights on everything), and the switches below. While the finish was very professional, the overall look wasn’t great.

I spoke to Boxt, and had the inverter lowered by just over 50cm, which largely hides it from view as you walk past.

The isolator switches were relocated to under the left-hand-side of the bay window, where they’re easy to access but, crucially, remain hidden.

I mention this as more of a guide for anyone using Boxt (or, indeed, another installer): make sure you know exactly where the inverter and any switches will go, and confirm exactly where you want them prior to installation.

Overall, the final installation was expertly done, and looked neater than other installations I’ve spotted walking around my neighbourhood, particularly with the panels themselves. I also prefer the inverter to be outside, as it would take up too much room inside a small, terraced house (it’s almost like those pesky Victorians didn’t think about solar panels when building millions of these houses).

At the end of the installation, Boxt commissions the inverter and gets it connected to your Wi-Fi. Boxt maintains the inverter’s master account and invites you as a full admin guest.

This makes a lot of sense, as if there are any issues, the support team can look at the app and see what’s going on.

From the Sunsynk app, you can see how much solar is being generated, what a battery (if connected) is doing and, via a clamp, how much power you’re drawing or sending to the grid. This information can have a slight delay, but it should give a close approximation of what’s going on.

For overall power consumption, I find that the Octopus app is best, but the Sunsynk app gives me a breakdown between solar and grid that’s very useful, so I know what I’m generating.

After the installation I was emailed the installation certificates and all the data that’s required for getting on a feed-in tariff. I signed up for the Octopus feed-in tariff as soon as I could, which means I get paid 15p per kWh exported to the grid. This took a few weeks to complete, after which I got a new dashboard in the Octopus app to track my earnings.

Performance

• Lots of power on a clear day
• Helpful support team

The first thing that I noticed was that the Synsynk app was often quite wrong. It would register the amount of solar power I was generating properly, but the house load and information from the grid was often completely wrong, even accounting for a delay. For example, on a cloudy day with 60W of solar, the Synsynk app would report that I was exporting 14W to the grid, suggesting a house load of just 46W; the Octopus app had it right at around 473W consumed.

Talking to the support team, they could view my inverter and see that the data wasn’t quite right. After sending a firmware update to the inverter and monitoring the system, sent someone round who moved the internal clamp, fixing the issue.

I find the Sunsynk app useful for seeing how much power I’m generating at any one time, but the Octopus app is better for seeing actual live household use.

Aside from monitoring solar and, if you have one, battery performance, the Sunsynk app isn’t much use. It has a section called Intelligent, where I could connect my Philips Hue lights to the system, using colour-changing to show the state of battery charge. That’s pretty useless, and it’s a shame that there aren’t more features.

For example, I’d like the app to have the ability to send a notification when solar generation exceeds a certain level, as a prompt to use up some power by turning on the washing machine or dishwasher.

Solar is very much an individual thing, but I can say that I’m impressed with my system. Having had it installed late in December, I was just in time for the shortest days, mixed with dull, cloudy days. 

On a clean, bright, sunny day, the system can (so far) deliver up to 1.4kW from a notional capacity of 2.37kW. Once the solar array is fully cranked up, it’s free power in the house, and it’s always nice to check the real-time information from Octopus and see a deficit – sometimes over 1kW.

What difference solar makes can only really be seen over a year, and maximising it does involve rethinking how appliances are used. I can see where solar is working.

Going away at the end of November, with nobody in the house, the 30 November was a nice, bright sunny day. Overall, that day, my usage in the house was just 4.14kWh, which is tiny. Without solar, and just background device usage (fridge, router, etc), I’d expect at least 7kWh. Compared to the previous day (29 November), when we were away but it was cloudy, the hourly breakdown shows what solar does – there are hours where no external power is used.

Pre-installation in November, my average usage was 12.89kWh of power per day; in December that came down to 11.79kWh per day with similar conditions throughout the month.

Where possible, I do try to maximise solar usage. So, on a bright sunny day when running a deficit, I try to run the washing machine, dishwasher and/or tumble dryer. Effectively, these appliances become free to run if there’s solar power.

Via my export tariff, I managed to export 13.75kWh in December, with the tariff only kicking in half-way through the month. That’s £2.06 of earnings. In January, I exported 31.59kWh of power (earning £4.74). 

The best export day I had was 4.2kWh, but on dull, cloudy days, there’s nothing going out. What this shows me is that in the colder, darker months, when I use more power, there’s rarely enough spare power to charge a battery for later, so I think I made the right decision not to have one.

While the export figures I have are hardly life-changing, they do make an impact: I basically export enough power that I claw back enough to pay for one and two days’ worth of electricity for nothing.

Once we hit the summer months, with a higher sun and longer daylight hours, my electricity production should massively jump, and sunny days should be almost free for me. I’ll update this review over the year to give a better idea.

Exact savings depend on the amount of sunlight and overall electricity demand, but I can say with confidence that on bright days, the solar panels can generate more power than I use and cope with spikes from higher-demand appliances, such as a washing machine. There’s a clear impact.

Should you buy it?