Renewable Energy Installer November 2015 | Page 11

“It’s time to come together and spread the message that heat pumps hold the key to an
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Q&A
Two minutes
with . . .
Raj Sidhu
GoodWe
Who are you?
Jill Oldham, managing director of Hero Renewables
What do you do?
I run the best renewable energy company in the country. We
specialise in heat pumps, biomass and solar.
Where are you?
I’m standing outside our brand new head office in Middlewich,
Cheshire. We have just opened our fabulous new showroom
where we welcome the general public to visit us to learn about
our renewable technologies.
How’s business at the moment?
Business is booming, word of mouth has become a major part
of our business strategy, derived from our excellent customer
service and professional installations up and down the country.
How could business be better?
The answer is obvious; the government needs to stop holding
back on the renewable energy industry and start educating
the UK instead of putting financial factors first. It’s their job to
reduce the UK’s carbon footprint and protect the future for our
children, at the moment they are failing us.
Who do you admire in renewables?
I admire my own team as they have such fantastic knowledge
and their passion for renewables is second to none.
What’s the best business advice you’ve ever received?
Always plan ahead, if you fail to plan you plan to fail. Listen to
your clients, without them you do not have a business – this is
the reason why customers return to Hero Renewables.
REI: What have you got planned for 2016?
RS: We are very excited about next year; the Year
of Energy Storage as we like to refer to 2016 within
the business. GoodWe has recently announced a
strategic partnership with BYD, one of the world’s
largest suppliers of rechargeable batteries. This, in
conjunction with our retrofit inverter unit GW2500,
will transform the domestic market in the UK. In
layman’s terms, it means that every single one of the
600,000 houses in the UK that has solar panels can
store the energy they generate in a cost-effective
way and without having to replace their existing
inverters.
What is top of your wishlist from the government?
Well, unsurprisingly, we would like them to re-think
their strategy and delay the adoption of the recently
announced DECC recommendations on the FiT cuts.
However, everyone knows in the industry that FiT
incentives have an expiry date, so the market will
consolidate and evolve again with installers moving
to commercial PV installations, whilst offering energy
storage to their domestic customers.
How is your company cutting its carbon footprint?
At GoodWe, we are very proud of our green
credentials. Our state of the art manufacturing
facility and R&D centre in Suzhou, China has a roof-
mounted 20kW PV system used mainly for testing
purposes. We also recycle all waste and in the rare
occasion where a faulty inverter is identified and
returned by a customer, we recycle over 70 percent
of its components, returning all the non-conforming
components back to our suppliers.
Raj Sidhu is managing director of
GoodWe UK
www.renewableenergyinstaller.co.uk | 11