The Minister for Energy and Climate Change, Greg Barker, has had a difficult interview on Radio 4 yesterday, according to this article from the SolarPowerPortal. He was (once again) accused of destroying the solar industry with the Feed-in-Tariff cuts. Rather than doing the same, I’d rather focus on the accurate knowledge of solar panel prices coming from Greg Barker – which could be the result of him visiting our CompareMySolar website… 

During the radio-interview, when Mr. Barker was confronted with low return when you pay £9,000 for a 4kWp solar panel system, he defended himself as follows:

“The numbers quoted just aren’t accurate; you said that the average cost of an installation was just over £9,000. Actually, Tesco are offering a comparable installation for £6,500. But it’s not just the big supermarkets, British Solar Power in London – £6,500, Solar Essence in Norfolk under £7,000. So I’m afraid the company you’ve found isn’t offering a competitively priced panel.”

Aside from shopping at Tesco, Mr. Barker seems to have good knowledge about specific prices of solar installers – which sometimes aren’t even listed on these installer’s website. However, when we visit www.comparemysolar.co.uk/london/ and sort on price we find British Solar Power in London – £6,500:

And when we visit www.comparemysolar.co.uk/norfolk/ we find Solar Essence in Norfolk for ‘just’ under £7,000:

Well done for Mr. Barker for staying on top on the latest prices for solar panels!