WundrWall - Battery Subscription. Looks good, but what am I missing?

[peekay]

A friend was telling me that they had signed up to a WundrWall battery subscription.

 

£35pcm for 10 years for a 12.8kWh battery. Including install, maintenance and DNO notification.

 

The user can choose the energy traffic, control the charge/discharge cycle, pay annually rather than monthly and also buy themselves out after 5 years.

 

Other options are 19.2kWh battery at £45pcm and 25.8kWh at £55pcm.

 

I am considering the £55pcm option (having been in the house for a year now, we use over 30kWh every day including the summer).

 

Given there is no upfront capital outlay from the user, we should immediately save £90ish pcm on our electricity bill at £0.13/kWh off-peak and £0.25kWh peak (£35 once the battery cost is taken away), and potentially even more if we switch to an EV tariff with a £0.07/kWh off-peak.

 

It almost seems too good to be true, which makes me think that it is, and I am missing something obvious. Is it the next 'scam' like having non-owned solar panels fitted to your roof that prevent you selling your house? Inflationary price rises make it £500pcm for the batteries, they stop working and nobody else is able to work on them yet I still have to pay, Wondrwall go bust and they stop working etc.

 

Any thoughts would be appreciated, or if anyone has signed up then I'd love to know how you are getting on.

 

Here is the link to the scheme 

 

https://wondrwall.com/battery-powrplan/

 

 

Edited 6 hours ago by peekay

[JohnMo]

£35 x 12 x 10 is £4200 so doesn't much in the scheme of things

 

33 minutes ago, peekay said:

and also buy themselves out after 5 years

Web site says "Midway through the contract, you’ll have a choice: either continue with the monthly payments or pay a settlement fee based on the contract’s remaining value at that point" so it may be an expensive option?

 

Only thoughts are  - do they have the ability to suck your battery dry, at any time they want, so they get paid for export and you pay to charge the battery?

 

Things that sound too good to true, normally are

[peekay]

10 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

£35 x 12 x 10 is £4200 so doesn't much in the scheme of things

 

 

The total cost seems slightly cheaper than I have been able to find independently. Money is tight at the moment, so the cost of financing a battery install makes it even more expensive.

 

12 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

Things that sound too good to true, normally are

Absolutely. Which I why I'm sceptical of this scheme, surely there must be a con somewhere.

[torre]

Apparently they're subsidised by the grid for helping balance demand which may help explain the pricing.

 

I'd work on the assumption you may have to buy out of the contract (and get a cost for that, it'll probably be more than the subscription) if you want to sell - says the contract can be transferred, but similar leasing of the solar panels themselves has caused problems for plenty of people when selling.

[JohnMo]

22 minutes ago, torre said:

Apparently they're subsidised by the grid for helping balance demand which may help explain the pricing.

So how does that work, if they are helping balance demand are they sucking energy out of the battery or is just by being installed its assumed that house demand will be next to zero in peak times? Without PV you generally as a residential customer, get nil for exports, unless on a one-off scheme for say a Tesla battery

[peekay]

I've found a Reddit thread with a bit more info