Yes to both. And this is such an important and often misunderstood concept. We say again, yes, Sologistics is an Approved Solar Retailer and has been for many years. And this is very different and much, much more than just being a Clean Energy Council Member. Anybody can be a member. You could be a member.

Unfortunately consumers can get the two confused and often will think a solar company is an Approved Retailer when they are simply a member.

Approved Solar Retailers are companies who have shown their commitment to responsible sales and marketing activities, and industry best practice for the sale of solar systems.

“By choosing to buy from a business that has signed up to our voluntary Solar Retailer Code of Conduct, you are choosing a business which has committed to a higher standard of quality and service”

Clean Energy Council Chief Executive Kane Thornton.

And fairly recently, The New Energy Tech Consumer Code (NETCC) program has been introduced. This expands the scope of the Approved Solar Retailer (ASR) program to cover new energy tech products and services including solar PV, energy storage, EV charging, VPPs and more. Sologistics is also one of the earliest New Energy Tech Approved Sellars.

Sologistics has been operating for 9+ years.

We started in the residential space and our residential clients were so pleased with their experience (because we explain things clearly and we’re very analytical which leads to accuracy with our forecasts and less cost for our clients) that more and more of them wanted us to help them with their commercial solar as well.

So we eventually launched our commercial solar division as well and now we do around 40 homes a months and usually have 1 or 2 much larger commercial projects running at any given time.

Sologistics is a private company, a family business originating in Melbourne, Victoria, and the founding family still owns and works every day within the business.

In fact, they are so actively involved in everything that happens for you as customers that you are certain to speak directly with either Cam or Jacqui or even both of them through your system design and installation experience.

We know nobody loves these 2 words but…it depends! On quite a few variables, actually. We train our people to help our customers to understand their REALISTIC likely outcomes, and no 2 situations are the same.

But we can give you a good insight into the typical outcome right now. Naturally one of the key variables is how much roof we have to work with. So let’s assume we have plenty of roof – and this doesn’t mean we intend to put lots of panels on either by the way - most people get sold too many panels, good for the short-term thinking solar salesperson but no good for the customer, because this simply means your payback period will be much longer than it should be. But that’s a whole other question.

If we’re talking the % of your power bill that you can get rid of, and we’re talking residential, and we have the roof-space we need, most of the time our customers will see around 50% - 70% of their power bill disappear, and we will achieve this with them seeing a payback period of around 3 - 4 years.

We can help you to get rid of more of your power bill if you are prepared to put more panels on, but the payback period will be longer the more panels we add because you will consume a lower % of the solar power produced.

In a commercial setting, again if we have the roof-space to work with, our clients will typically see around 75% of their power bill gone, with around a 3.5 year payback period.

We believe in order to give you proper, genuine solar advice, a person absolutely needs to physically check out a number of aspects of your home. This is because a large part of the cost for you is in the installation process and everybody’s home is unique. You should protect yourself and NEVER engage with a solar company that tries to sell you a system over the phone without also involving a PRE-INSTALLATION site visit by a qualified and expereinced installation crew.

We conduct our initial consultation over the phone with some really helpful and informative digital documents to help you to fully understand your opportunity quickly and easily. We provide you immediately with a Preliminary Advice - a document that gives you all of the design, cost and savings information clearly.

Then, as a next-step, one of our 5 highly credentialed and experienced installation crews (again Clean Energy Council / New Energy Tech accredited solar installers) will come to your home to confirm everything for you.

Firstly, we are not pushy salespeople. We engage with you to QUOTE & EXPLAIN in order to help you to understand your options.

1. We will consider a number of things including power boards, roof type, roof pitch, roof access, meters, distances between likely panel and inverter locations, shadow etc.
2. We will then answer any and all questions you have and we will also take the time to explain all of the important things about solar, what it can do for you and also what it cannot do. Our clients tell us they really enjoy the experience because they feel very knowledgeable afterwards! As we said, we do not treat these sessions as a selling opportunity. In fact we don’t ever even ask you to buy anything.
3. We provide a comprehensive Preliminary Advice detailing everything for you on that initial phone conversation.
4. We then conduct a formal site visit - one of our crews visits your home and physically confirms everything so we don't eventually get to installation day and have any surprises.
5. We then schedule the installation and also book the Government-appointed Inspector to follow us onto site to proved you with a Certificate of Electrical Safety.

The whole process usually takes 5 weeks.

There are a number of incentives in play today. And they vary by state and by type of system (residential or commercial) and by system size.

All systems below 100KW (about 300 panels) attract a Federal Government incentive scheme, called Small Technology Certificates (commonly referred to as STC’s). This incentive, equating to roughly around 25% of the cost and increasing as a % the further North you live in Australia, is paid up-front and comes off the price before you buy. It is calculated based on solar production and this is why as a % it increases up North – there is more sun and your solar system produces more clean energy and so you are rewarded with more STC’s!

All systems over 100KW attract a different Federal Government incentive scheme, called Large Generation Certificates (commonly referred to as LGC’s). This incentive, on todays price, equates to roughly around 30% of the cost and it too increases the further North you are. However this one is not paid up-front, but rather in annual instalments until 2030, as a reward for clean power your system produces.

In Victoria, for residential systems, there is another incentive scheme that has been recently introduced by the Andrew’s Government. It is called the Home Solar Scheme and it has 2 parts. A Home Solar rebate of $1,400 and an interest-free 4-year loan from the government for another $1,400. There is also an interest-free loan for up to $8,800 from the State Government for battery storage solutions.

To qualify, your household income needs to be less than $210K and your home must be worth less than $3M.

You should be paying no more than $1000 per KW for your standard, high-quality PV system, fully installed and operational (after rebate).

No 2 situations are ever identical (equipment, installation requirements at your site etc) and so there is variance in ultimate cost, but generally speaking, if your situation is fairly straightforward and you are being asked to spend much more than this, then that’s a bit expensive, and alternatively if somebody is offering you a system for much less than this, we’d question the quality – somebody is cutting corners somewhere.

3 key points first of all:

• Sologistics does not represent or act as agents for any particular brands – in fact we can get any product that is approved for the Australian market – and so we genuinely provide you with unbiased advice on equipment;
• Sologistics only works with the highest-quality equipment;
• Sologistics absolutely has a few favorite brands (panels, inverters and balance of system) that we recommend our clients use because they are widely recognized as being the best.

There are 100 panel brands approved for use in Australia, but there are only a few that are genuinely the best - we just stick with those. Our most recommended panel brands include:

• Seraphim;
• SunPower;
• QCells;
• Suntech;
• Jinko;
• Canadian;
• Trina;
• Winaico;
• REC.

Similarly, there are over 25 inverter brands of any not, but 5 standout as the best. Our most recommended inverter brands are:

• Enphase;
• Fronius;
• Sungrow;
• Goodwe;
• Fimer.

You can really summarize a highly complex and technical field with a simple statement:

‘In a panel you look for high efficiency, low temperature coefficient and low degradation’.

All the other things that people talk about with regard to panel assessment are simply technical characteristics of the panels that are either designed to increase or decrease these 3 capabilities.

In other words, you want your panel to be as efficient as possible – more power, less size – and to fall away in production power as slowly as possible as a result of temperature or time.

Yes we do, and...it depends.

There are already 40 battery storage solutions approved for use in Australia by the Clean Energy Council, and we can access all of them. There are 4 that already are smarter and more sophisticated than the others - Tesla, Sungrow, BYD and Enphase.

They are still quite expensive so it depends on your situation as to whether or not they make sense. Certainly, it's a fast-developing and exciting space and more of our customers are installing batteries all the time, so by all means speak with our Consultants and we'll help you to decide whether you should consider a battery with your solar.

Over the journey we have built a stable of 8 crews (5 in Victoria and 3 in NSW) who we ONLY EVER USE to install our projects, all 40+ residential installs each month as well as the much bigger commercial projects. They are the best of the best and we never stray from them - because we want to know the people on your roof.

Whilst they are fully accredited Clean Energy Council Solar Installers, they are not 'on our payroll' full-time (it would cost too much to employ them full-time - that's how good they are!) but we do so much work together it's really just like we're a partnership, so you might as well think of them as our in-house crews.