Last week, Solar Power Portal reported the unfortunate story of Balby residents Dennis and Patricia Jennings, who were conned out of £1,500 by Yorkshire Solar Panels Ltd. The solar company secured the money as a deposit but failed to install any panels, before apparantly disappearing.
After reading of the Jennings’ situation, Thorne-based Libra Energy UK and Doncaster-based companies, Green Energy Solutions UK and QC scaffolding decided to join together to donate a 2kWp system to the couple. The Jennings will completely own the donated array, allowing the pensioners to not only benefit from cheaper electricity bills but also enjoy all the income generated from the system’s feed-in tariff payments.
Paul Bradbury, the UK General Manager of Libra Energy, explained: “When we read about the disgusting treatment of Mr & Mrs Jennings we felt compelled to act. The UK solar industry is still in its infancy and is going through a tough time at the minute; fraudsters such as Yorkshire Solar Panels Ltd are the last thing we need. There are plenty of people who would be appalled by what has happened to this couple but few who would act upon it. We decided that rather than just sit back and shake our heads in disgust, we would do something positive about it.
“We made the offer to supply a complete system free of charge and were delighted when Green Energy Solutions offered to install the system with further support from QC and Canadian Solar who all offered their services for free. Mr & Mrs Jennings have impressed us with the way they are trying to highlight this issue in order to prevent others being conned. We felt that their actions and tenacity should be recognised and that by supplying this system we could show our support”.
Patricia Jennings described the ordeal that the couple were put through by the rogue-traders: “We were at the end of our tether as nobody wanted to help us – we tried everyone but nobody wanted to know. We just wanted to share our bad experience with others and to warn everyone that things like this do actually happen unfortunately. We hope these people get caught sooner rather than later and are brought to justice.
“We can’t thank Paul, Marcus and Richard enough – things like this don’t happen to us very often and we’re extremely grateful for the generosity they have shown.”
Managing Director of Green Energy Solutions, Marcus Payne, commented: “I’m delighted to be in a position to help out Dennis and Patricia and I hope they enjoy the benefits of their new solar PV system.”
Richard Dunn, Installations Manager at QC Scaffolding, said: “We got involved with the install as Dennis and Patricia are a Doncaster couple and we’re a Doncaster company and we just basically wanted to help them out.
“Their story touched our hearts and we were more than happy to do our bit to hopefully help eradicate the bad memories of their unfortunate experience.”
The Jennings are due to have their solar array installed later this month, meanwhile the trading standards are still actively investigating Yorkshire Solar Panels Ltd.
