...SHARP SALES TACTICS TO WATCH OUT FOR

HERE, Money Mail exposes the tactics desperate solar sharks might try on you . . . ‘

YOU QUALIFY FOR A FREE HEALTH CHECK’: Qualified tradesmen should charge for work, so anyone promising to give a system a ‘free health check’ could be a scammer trying to get their foot in the door.

‘WE CAN BOOST YOUR SOLAR POWER BY 25 pc’: Optimisers can slightly improve power generation, but only significantly if your system is partly in the shade.

‘YOU NEED A BATTERY’: Expensive solar storage batteries are not for everybody. They can cost up to £4,000 and only guarantee savings for people who generate far more power than they can use in a day.

‘ YOUR INVERTER NEEDS REPLACING’: Many panels came with a five-year warranty for the inverter — the part that turns the solar power into domestic electricity. But if your inverter is still working, it does not need to be replaced.

‘ YOUR COMPONENTS ARE FAULTY’: Cold callers claiming that you need to replace broken or faulty parts won’t have access to your output data and therefore cannot know how your panels are functioning.