Solar here is harder than it looks.
Anyone can put panels on a roof. Getting a 50 to 100 kilowatt system onto a working building in the Caribbean - imported, certified, sized to a real load and still performing in year ten - is a different job. That's the one we do.
Four things decide whether a system works.
None of them are the panels. They're the parts of the job that never show up in a quote, and they're where a commercial install is won or lost.
A system that can't be certified to the country's standard is a system nobody will sign off, and that gets decided by choices made long before anyone climbs a roof - which inverter, wired which way. We've been called to jobs where the system already on the roof never met it.
Most of a commercial system does not exist on the island. It gets shipped, imported, cleared, taxed and brokered before a single panel goes up, and every one of those steps is somewhere a job stalls for weeks.
Not to your bill, and not to a rule of thumb. What you need to keep running, and for how long, is a different sum for a poultry house than for a restaurant, and getting it wrong is expensive in both directions.
Salt air eats fixings, storms test mountings, and a nearby lightning strike will find its way down the DC run if the protection is wrong. A roof on the coast is a different job from the same roof inland.
One company, factory to sign-off.
Handling the whole chain isn't tidiness. Those four failures happen in the gaps between suppliers, brokers and installers, so we took the gaps out.
- Designed and commissioned in-house.The person who sizes your system is the person who tests it and hands it over.
- Imported on our account, not yours.Shipping, customs, duty and brokerage sit with us, so a hold-up at the port is our problem to solve.
- Certified by a licensed specialist.Signed off before handover, so what goes in is what can be approved.
- Installed to our design.Contractors who do the install and the commissioning, working to a system we designed and will be signing off.
The system has to outlast the sale.
A commercial system is a twenty-year decision. These are the terms that come with ours, and when they run out the aftercare carries on as paid service rather than stopping.
We've quoted a small job and told the customer a generator was the better buy. If the arithmetic doesn't work, you'll hear that before you hear a price.
We build 50 to 100 kilowatt systems. Much bigger and the job changes shape, and we'd rather say so than take it and learn on your roof.
Named makes and models before anything is ordered, not "tier-one panels" and a total at the bottom of the page.
Jamaica and Barbados, and nowhere we can't stand behind.
We're based in Clarendon, and most of the year's work is Jamaican. Barbados is the second market. If you're somewhere else we'll usually know someone rather than stretch to reach you.
Everything we've installed is at the size we specialise in - a 50 kW poultry house, a 30 kW short-let, a private home.
Tell us what you're trying to power.
A few questions and we'll tell you roughly what size system it needs, what it would take to keep you running through an outage, and whether we're the right people to build it.
Or call +1 876 839 0044, or email info@carribsol.com.