We look after solar systems, including the ones we didn't install. Whether your panels went up last year or a decade ago, we service, repair, clean and protect them.
Solar panels are often sold as fit-and-forget. For the most part that is fair. There are no moving parts, nothing to refuel, and a decent system will run for twenty-five years or more without much drama.
But fit-and-forget is not the same as fit-and-ignore. Inverters fail. Birds get underneath. Fixings work loose. Trees that were saplings when the panels went up start throwing shade across a string in the afternoon. And because a solar system fails quietly, most owners find out months later, if at all, when they finally look at a bill and wonder why the numbers moved.
That is the gap we fill.
We service systems, we fix them when something has gone wrong, and we tell you honestly when nothing has.
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Every service covers the same ground, whether you have twelve panels on a semi in Stockport or four hundred on a distribution centre roof.
Three reasons come up again and again, and none of them are about squeezing out an extra few percent of generation.
Most home and commercial building insurance policies expect installed equipment to be maintained to a reasonable standard. If a fault causes damage and there is no evidence the system was ever inspected, an insurer can reasonably ask why.
Commercial policies tend to be more explicit, and some name periodic electrical inspection as a condition of cover.
We provide a dated, itemised report after every visit, which gives you something to point at.
Solar fires are rare, and it is worth saying that plainly rather than trading on fear. But they are not unheard of, and when they happen the causes are usually known ones: degraded or badly made DC connectors, damaged cable insulation, arcing at a junction, or nesting material building up underneath an array and sitting against warm components.
Every one of those is something a competent inspection finds before it becomes a problem. This is also why we treat bird proofing as part of maintenance rather than a separate cosmetic concern. Twigs, feathers and droppings packed under a live array are a genuine hazard, not just a mess.
Panel and inverter warranties are usually long, and usually conditional. Manufacturers commonly exclude damage caused by improper cleaning, unauthorised modification, or failure to maintain. Aggressive cleaning is a particularly common way to void cover, which is one reason we do not use pressure washers or detergents.
If you ever need to make a warranty claim, a service history helps. If you have never had the system looked at, you are relying on the manufacturer's goodwill.
If your system is producing less than it used to, it is almost always one of these. We check all of them.
| What's happened | How it shows up | Fixable? |
|---|---|---|
| Soiling | Gradual decline, worse in dry spells | Yes, cleaning |
| Bird fouling or nesting | Sudden drop on one string, noise from the roof | Yes, clean and proof |
| New shading | Same time each day, worse across a season | Usually, tree work or optimisers |
| Inverter fault | Sharp drop or total loss, error code | Yes, repair or replace |
| String or connector failure | One section producing nothing | Yes |
| Panel degradation | Slow decline over many years | Normal, roughly 0.5% a year |
| Monitoring fault | Generation looks wrong but isn't | Yes, and reassuringly common |
That last row matters. A fair number of panicked calls turn out to be a monitoring or wi-fi problem rather than a solar problem. We would always rather tell you that than sell you a repair you don't need.
Most inverters last somewhere between ten and fifteen years, against panels rated for twenty-five or more.
If your system is around a decade old and generation has fallen off a cliff, the inverter is the first suspect.
A replacement inverter typically costs £1,200 to £2,000 fitted, depending on its size and type. We keep some in stock and source others for the job. A routine service on a home system costs around £200 to £300.
We repair where repair makes sense and replace where it doesn't, and we will tell you which you are looking at before any work starts. Where a replacement is needed we will also tell you whether a hybrid inverter is worth considering, because it opens up adding a battery later without a second round of work.
For commercial sites we work to a scheduled maintenance agreement rather than ad-hoc call-outs, because on a large array the cost of an undetected fault is measured in months of lost generation.
What that includes
We work around your operations. On a warehouse or a working farm, that usually means planning access around deliveries, livestock or production, and we would rather build the schedule around your day than turn up and be in the way.
Several of the larger cleaning and maintenance contractors will not quote for anything under a couple of hundred panels. That leaves a lot of people stuck: the pub with forty panels, the care home with a hundred and twenty, the farm with a single barn roof, the homeowner whose installer stopped trading years ago.
We take those jobs. If you have solar and it needs looking at, we would rather come and look at it.
DB Energy is MCS certified and a member of RECC. Our electrical work is carried out under NICEIC registration, we are CHAS accredited, and our workmanship guarantee is insured through IWA.
MCS certified
RECC member
NICEIC registered
CHAS accredited
IWA insurance-backed guarantee
We service homes across the North West, including Warrington, Liverpool, Manchester, Crewe, Runcorn, Widnes and Oldham, Greater Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire. We service commercial and agricultural systems across the UK, including Scotland, Wales, London, the Midlands and the North East. Wherever you are, we deal with your network operator and handle any notifications your work requires.
That is usually the honest starting point. Book a health check and we will tell you what we find, including if the answer is that everything is working exactly as it should.
We reply to every enquiry within two working days.
