Solar panel complaints escalate

West Australian residential solar panel owners are disillusioned:

State-owned electricity retailer Synergy has warned customers to lower their expectations about the financial benefits of solar panel installations amid a wave of complaints about the systems under-delivering.

Amid figures which reveal that solar panel installations were among the biggest sources of annoyance for Synergy customers, the utility said many people held unrealistic beliefs about how much money the systems could make.

It comes as record numbers of people in WA take up generous State and Federal incentives to have the devices installed, many hoping to cover the cost of their power and sell surplus generated power back into the grid.

Synergy spokesman Andrew Gaspar said the number of installations had risen from a handful a month to about 600 a week, with almost 30,000 homes having solar panels for power on their roofs compared to just 1000 in July 2008.

Caveat emptor.