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Luxembourg “We were not prepared for such a demand for panels”
LUXEMBOURG – As energy prices soar, demand for solar panels has surged. Installers struggle to keep up.
Residents are increasingly turning to solar panels.
Vincent Lescaut
“Rising gas and electricity prices are pushing customers towards solar. There are so many solicitations that we could choose the clients. SMS, email, Whatsapp, private or pro mobile”. Co-founder of Letz Green Renewables, Sasan Rafii sees the explosion in demand for photovoltaic panels every day.
“I receive four to five requests a day and we do two to three installations a week,” says the entrepreneur, who nevertheless says he is delighted with the dynamism of the market and the “green idea”. Since the birth of the Eschoise company in January 2021, the requests have been “multiplied by ten or fifteen”. “We weren’t prepared for such an influx,” says Grégory Klein, manager of BK Industrie in Schengen, who speaks of delays of six to nine months. Other installers admit to having “stopped the quotes”, after a year’s delay.
A recruitment problem
“We do around a hundred installations a year, but it could be double that. The problem is more the lack of qualified personnel than the equipment”, continues Grégory Klein. And customers are getting impatient. Some get annoyed. “Installing panels requires real know-how, especially on slate, and you can’t find that kind of staff. Salaries are not the problem. Our installers are well paid. Better than an engineer in France”. Letz Green Renewables, which also does not rely on foreign contractors, also notes the labor shortage.
For Sasan Rafii, the problem of shortages of equipment which concerned in particular the inverters “starts to be regulated”. He believes that the rise in panel prices in recent months has been less than that of energy costs. “An installation that cost 15,000 euros is probably 17,500/18,000 today, but the customer finds his way around,” he says.
And the development potential is huge. “Small panels, for example, which are very fashionable in Germany (1.70 m by 1.15 m) are not yet very widespread in Luxembourg. It’s a big market. People don’t know they can plug them into an outlet.”
The question of profitability
In Luxembourg, installations are multiplying (9,167 last July compared to 8,653 in July 2021), and solar energy production reached historic records this summer (40.1 GWh in July 2022). Customers must choose between the total sale of their production or self-consumption, which is preferred in most cases. Is it profitable? “The profitability of an installation depends on the price and the adequacy between production and consumption. It’s up to the installer to properly inform the customer,” emphasizes Grégory Klein.
And the phenomenon should not slow down, because from next year the VAT rate for panels will drop to 3%. “I will be even more harassed than today,” says Grégory Klein.