third Party Installations [RE-wrenches]

[Joel Davidson]

Xantrex's pricing policy favors volume customers, most of whom are warehouse
distributors, not installers.

A custom installer who does really good systems, knows how to work with
customers and building officials, prevents problems and pays his bills promptly
is a valuable resource that should be nurtured by his wholesale distributor with
best prices regardless of volume.

If I had been given the choice between quality and quantity, I would choose
quality. However, U.S. population has doubled in my lifetime and world
population has tripled. Custom PV systems can either be playthings for a few
hundred thousand relatively rich Americans or beta sites for mass produced PV
systems for the 1.6 billion people who have no electricity and the billions more
who live downwind from polluting power plants. More and cheaper PV is better.

Which brings us back to the original question about Xantrex Power Panels. Aside
from the fact that one size does not fit all and the weight (you only lift a
power panel a few times before it is finally fastened permanently to the wall),
I prefer Pulse Power Centers. However, I can imagine a combination
inverter/power center with plug-and-play boards that is mass produced in greater
numbers than 100 amp service panels and sold at hardware stores all over the
world. I can even imagine a world where there is enough non-polluting, renewable
electricity for everyone, but it is going to take terawatts of volume to fulfill
my dream.


Allan Sindelar wrote:

> Joel,
> > 4. It is not bad for the industry to sell things at lower prices to volume
> customers.
> >
> Yes it is, in this field. That's how the
> Solar-cheaper-than-you'll-ever-be.coms persist. It's fine for selling fruit
> baskets or Ginzu Knives. What all of the wrenches I read are telling you is
> that PV isn't do-it-yourself stuff, it's something that needs good design,
> good education, and good installation. An installing dealership, if it's
> really done well, will never be a volume purchaser of hardware, because
> volume sales and proper design & installation are mutually exclusive
> approaches.
>
> Trace/Xanthrax changed their pricing structure in part to weed out the
> dotcommers, because they had observed that the do-it-yourselfers had a way
> higher rate of problem calls. They made it more difficult for those who
> failed to give support and service to compete with the low-volume,
> high-support Wrenches.
> Allan at Positive Energy
>
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