We will assess the potential suppliers and their proposed solutions and products, probably asking questions and from this decide who to short-list. Probably around 2-3 suppliers will be chosen, based on a balance of the credibility and reputation of the supplier and the quality, capabilities and performance of the products proposed and the speed, quality and reliability of the installation and support services. Plus of course value for money, but to be clear this is NOT about selecting the lowest bidder or a race to the bottom.

We expect to have a long-term relationship with the chosen supplier(s) as we are likely to expand the initiative to nearby communities.

If the supplier is interested and suitable there may also be opportunities to work with us on other areas of our community energy initiative, such as solar farms and heating. See the Plan for more background.

The vast majority of the homes are located in the Parish of Somerford Keynes, near Cirencester Glos. A few are located elsewhere in the South of England in some cases where someone owns more than one home, being able to handle these additional homes is a “nice to have” with the supplier.

We will supply a spreadsheet to all applicants that has details on each home. See the About Us section for overall location details and maps.

The majority of the homes are located in Lower Mill Estate (LME), which is a private estate adjacent to the village of Somerford Keynes, the others are either in the main village of Somerford Keynes or other areas of the South of England, as above. Some of the homes on LME are of the same design as each other, which may simplify quoting and planning.

A group of homeowners (Community Energy Champions) will run the procurement process and evaluation of the proposal. The evaluation criteria will be a balance of:

Company capabilities and longevity: Looking at company financials, ability to scale, reviews/references, installation and support services. To choose a supplier that should do a great job installing and long-term supporting homes and should be around in the long-term.

Products: Looking at the proposed products and their manufacturer’s technical features, efficiency, warranty, company and product reputation/reviews and longevity, together with how all the products will work together and be easy for homeowners to manage and monitor.

Commercials: Looking at the proposed commercials including Total Cost of Ownership (balanced with the other evaluation criteria, we aren’t simply looking for the lowest price), payment terms, and the terms & conditions.

The exact timescales will depend on the responses and workload involved, a rough 2022 timeline is:

August: Start discussing with potential suppliers and finalise the RFP (this page).

September: Issue RFP to suppliers with a one-month response time, unless otherwise agreed. Suppliers are welcome to ask questions throughout, either by email or phone/video call.

October: Evaluate RFP responses and choose a shortlist, which may involve some discussions with suppliers.

November: Evaluate the shortlist, probably including firm quotes for a number of representative homes.

December: Award to one or more suppliers and ask homeowners to sign contracts with the supplier to book the installation.

Spring 2023: Installations (exact timescales depending on lead times)

This is is the stage we are at now.

Please contact mikesmckeown@gmail.com to confirm you will be responding and to be sent details of the five sample homes – we will provide the specific location (address and What Three Words) and details about the roof, building, current power use etc.

We would like you to provide your standard quotation based on a remote “survey” (you are welcome to visit the site if you wish, but it’s not required). We would like the quotes to provide pricing for the individual components, making clear the manufacturer/model of each component proposed and providing an installation price estimate and any ongoing support pricing for the whole solution. We realise that different houses may have different requirements so quotes will be bespoke at the end, at this stage, we are looking for quotes against a fixed specification so we can compare them technical and commercially.

Ideally, we would like quotes for all five homes as they represent different roof types, however, you could choose to provide just one if you wish to start with.

Please include the following items in the quote:

– 4KW solar panels (under DNO special application limit) – with additional cost if we wanted all black panels

– Bird protection netting

– Optimizers (we know this is optional, but we want to see the pricing)

– Inverter

– Intelligent power division, such as MyEnergy Eddi, or similar, that can send any excess solar generation to either hot water heating or EV charging

– 5KW (usable) battery

– 7KW EV charger (wall mounted)

– Additional required equipment (cables etc)

– Equipment rental, such as scaffolding

– Surveying and planning submission

– Installation

– Support

– Options you wish to offer (such as larger solar panel KW, larger batteries, battery backup in event of a mains power cut, advanced system management, water heat diverter, all black panels etc)

– Outline how you see a large-scale installation of ~90 homes would work in terms of scheduling and any savings from synergies or bulk purchase – please give the pricing above based on a single home ordering, and separately explain how the ~90 home scale would affect the pricing, for example, discounts for ~40 homes and 80 homes)

– Some of the homes have very limited or no interior space, so may need all or most of the active equipment to be mounted on a side wall. We want this to be neat, and knowing how you would approach this would be helpful.

Note: At this stage, you should assume the installation is straightforward, such as short cable runs, accessible for scaffolding etc.  We recognise this will need more detailed surveying to give final binding quotes, which will be later in the process.

Following evaluation of the initial quotes and discussions with you, we will shortlist and go into more detail, as described in the following sections – we are providing this now to give you an idea of what we are looking for and to allow you to comment before we finalise this.

We are looking for a high-quality, proven, safe, reliable partner for our community. We want to know the company is financially sound and should be around to support us in the long term.

Question: Company name (provide both if your company trades under a different name to that registered on companies house)

Question: Company number (from companies house)

Question: How long has the company been trading?

Question: How many employees doe the company currently have?

Question: What % of the company’s business currently comes from the subject of this RFP (home Solar/Batteries/EV changing) vs other areas

Question: Please provide at least 3 years of accounts (summary information from companies house), in particular, turnover, profit(loss), cash on hand, total debts & outstanding bills and total creditors)

Question: Are you rated on any well-known rating sites such as Trustpilot, if so please provide a link

Question: Can you provide any references – at the first stage just some example projects, at the final selection stage we will want to talk to some references

Question: Are you MSC certified (mandatory)

Question: Are you a member of any protection scheme that would reimburse costs to homeowners if your company ceased to trade between order/deposit placement and installation complete, if yes then please describe, including if this has any additional costs.

Question: Are you a member of any protection scheme that would transfer support and maintenance to another company in the event your company ceases trading after installation, if yes please describe, including if this has any additional costs

All but two of the home are asking for roof-mounted solar. Two have solar already and are interested in the battery and EV charger part of the proposal. One home could potentially accommodate ground mount solar.

In the pricing section we will ask you to provide indicative pricing for one house we have chosen as fairly representative and gives a standard house to compare quotes against.

Most of the homes are standard tiled pitched roofs, however, there are several different roof configurations at LME.

Some LME homes have flat roofs, at least one of these already has solar installed. There are two variants. One is purely flat roof spaces, others use the roofs as “sun decks”, see photo below.

Some LME homes have metal roofs, we believe these would be best suited to a solar film panel solution.

Some LME homes have a pitched roof which is a mix of metal and grass, again see the photo below.

Due to the planning permission for LME as a whole, there are no permissive development rights for homes on the estate, meaning planning permission will be required for solar on these homes. Several homes on LME have already installed solar and the planning permission was a formality. We are also working closely with the Cotswold District Council, who are very supportive of our initiative, to simply the bulk planning permission.

The majority of the homes are traditional pitched slates. There are several non-standard roof types:

Flat roof – in some cases just a flat roof and in other cases a sundeck that is used

Metal (Zinc) roof – these are pitched

Grass and Metal (Zinc) Roof – these are pitched roofs with two parts, one is part is grass on it and the other metal

We understand these will need specific surveying to quote and may present some limitations. We would like to understand if in principal you can handle this

Question: Do you expect to be able to handle these non-standard roofs? Any comments?

Question: Can you offer a solar film option that can be applied directly to the metal roofs?

Question: What vendor(s) of solar film do you offer?

Question: Please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the product proposed

Question: What can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

Question: What manufacturer and model of inverters do you propose in your quote and any others you optionally wish to offer

Question: Please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the product proposed

Question: What can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

Question: What is the projected lifetime of the inverters?

Question: What is the inverter warranty duration?

Question: Please state if the terms of the warranty vary after the inverters reach a certain age.

Question: Please state if there are any limitations on what the warranty covers (other than the obvious like accidental damage)?

Question: Anything noteworthy about the inverters you would like to highlight?

Some of the homes may have some shading on their roofs, therefore we will need at least an option for optimisers that will ensure the unshaded panels operate at full power while others are shaded and we understand optimisers have benefits with efficiency and reliability.

Question: Does your system include optimisers or is this an extra cost?

Question: Do your optimisers handle each panel completely independently or are they grouped? If so how are they grouped?

Question: Where would the optimisers be installed? For example are they part of or located with the panels or optimisers?

Question: What manufacturer and model of optimiser do you propose in your quote and any others you optionally wish to offer

Question: Please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the product proposed

Question: What can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

Question: What is the projected lifetime of the optimisers?

Question: What is the optimiser warranty duration?

Question: Please state if the terms of the warranty vary after the optimisers reach a certain age.

Question: Please state if there are any limitations on what the warranty covers (other than the obvious like accidental damage).

Question: Anything noteworthy about the optimisers you would like to highlight?

Over 80% of the homes have requested batteries. We understand there are many battery options in terms of AC vs DC, capacity, charge and discharge rate etc.

For our standard quote, we are asking for a battery with a minimum of 5kWh of usable (not theoretical) capacity and we would like pricing for different size options as we anticipate different homes may opt for different sizes.

Question: What manufacturer and model of battery do you propose in your quote and any others you optionally wish to offer

Question: Please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the product proposed

Question: What can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

Question: What is the theoretical capacity of the battery (kWh)?

Question: What is the usable capacity of the battery (kWh)?

Question: Is the battery AC or DC?

Question: Can the battery provide backup power in the event of a power cut? If so is this standard or an extra cost option (we understand this needs DNO approval)?

Question: What is the maximum charge rate (kW) of the battery?

Question: What is the maximum discharge rate (kW) of the battery?

Question: What is the projected lifetime of the battery?

Question: What is the battery warranty duration?

Question: Please state the terms of the warranty that vary after the batteries reach a certain age (if any).

Question: Please state if there are any limitations on what the warranty covers (other than the obvious like accidental damage).

Question: Please provide details of other batter options you propose, including prices and usable capacities

Question: Anything noteworthy about the batteries you would like to highlight?

Just over 60% of the homes have requested an EV charger. We would like an EV charger option that would integrate intelligently with the rest of the system such that EV charging was automatically managed to reduce cost, for example charging during the day when there is excess solar or at off-peak electricity times at night.

Some of the homes would be a relatively straightforward outside wall installation, however, some have parking spaces some distance from the home which would require some digging.

For our standard quote, we are asking for an intelligent EV charger that integrates with the system and provided 7kW type 2 charging, it may be tethered or untethered.

Question: What manufacturer and model of charger do you propose in your quote and any others you optionally wish to offer

Question: Please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the product proposed

Question: What can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

Question: Some homeowners rent their homes for holidays. Can you offer an option for these homeowners to either control access to the charger (such as a PIN) or provide a way of billing for guests to use the charge? Please describe what you can offer and the cost for this option(s)

Question: Is it tethered or untethered? If tethered what is the cable length?

Question: What is the charger warranty duration?

Question: Can you offer a standalone pole mount type charger for homes where the charger cannot be attached to a wall? If so what make and model do you propose?

Question: For those homes that will require some digging between the home and the parking location is that something you can organise vs the homeowner having to separately arrange for groundworks?

Question: Anything noteworthy about the charger you would like to highlight?

We are keen to understand what additional controls and options you can offer.

Question: Can your solution divert solar energy to heat water in preference to exporting? If so is this standard or an extra cost?

Question: Any other controls or options you’d like to draw our attention to?

Question: Please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the products proposed

Question: What can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

Simplicity and automated management are important to make the solution easy to use for homeowners. We’d prefer a single view and management of the system vs lots of separate Apps. For more advanced users it would be useful for the system to provide details reports, system controls and the ability to export data.

Question: Can your system be managed by a single iOS or Android App, or will more than one be required?

Question: Please provide links to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for all the Apps proposed in your solution – we will use them to check reviews

Question: Does your system provide a web interface with more advanced reporting and controls? If so people describe or provide a link.

Question: Does your system allow for data to be exported and API connection? Please describe, including a link if possible

Question: If the system management vendor is different to the product vendors for the components proposed please provide a URL to the manufacturer’s website, specifically to the product proposed

Question: If the system management vendor is different to the product vendors for the components proposed what can you tell us about the reputation or maturity of the supplier, for example, market share, reviews, years in business etc?

We expect that to create a final fixed price quote for each home it will be necessary for the supplier to visit the homes to survey.

We believe we can improve the efficiency of this process through our bulk purchase scheme by coordinating a site visit where the supplier can survey all the homes in one visit (except for the handful of homes that are located outside of our community).

We will likely ask a small number of shortlisted suppliers to survey a few representative homes so that we have final firm quotes to evaluate before choosing the final supplier(s).

Question: Do you have any suggestions on how to work with you at the shortlist stage?

Question: Would you charge to survey and firm quote at the shortlist stage? If so how much (approx).

Question: If selected would you charge for individual home surveys? If so how much (approx).

Question: Would you need access to the inside of homes to survey them?

Question: Please tell us how you would approach system planning with individual homes and with Thames Head Energy overall.

Question: Can you assist with preparing and submitting planning applications to Cotswold District Council, where required? If yes please give an overview.

We would like to understand the likely lead times from award installation and the best appropriate to installation that would make the process more efficient and cost-effective based on a community-wide approach.

Question: Do you have any suggestions on the approach that would improve efficiency and cost, for example, coordinated installation dates, bulk shipping, local storage etc?

Question: What is the expected lead time from selecting you for the shortlist and providing firm quotes for a few sample homes?

Question: What is the expected lead time from selecting you as our chosen supplier and providing firm quotes to all the homes, assuming a single site visit for surveys can be arranged

Question: What is the expected lead time from homeowners accepting your quote / placing an order and completing all the installations – please give an overview of how this is likely to work, for example from starting the first installs to completing the last of the installs.

Question: We are aware there may be longer lead times on batteries than on other components. Would you suggest installing the solar systems first and batteries later? If so what would the likely time be from the competition of solar installation to completion of the battery installation and will this increase costs?

Question: What is your approximate capacity, i.e. home many homes can you be installing simultaneously, how long do you anticipate it to take you to install ~80 homes around our area from point of first to the last install?

Question: Anything else you would like to tell us about your installation service and approach?

A good warranty on the equipment and installation service backed up by strong long-term support are important.

We anticipate homeowners being able to choose at least these two options:

Warranty only: Warrantee on the initial installation and product warranties

Support: A full support service

Question: Please confirm if individual homeowners can elect for warrantee only or full support

Question: How long does your installation warrantee last – i.e. the period you warrantee your installation work

Question: If a homeowner opts for warrantee only for how long from installation will you undertake manufacturer warranty repairs without charge (for example if a solar panel fails and needs replacement after what period would you charge for the replacement fitting)

Question: For out-of-service warrantee work what is your hourly £ rate? and what other costs do you charge, for example, travel and materials?

Question: What optional support services do you offer?

This section covers the reference pricing request against five representative homes in the community. This information will have already been gathered in the Request for Quotation stage, it may be revised for the final RFP stage. You should assume that no home-specific work is required, such as special access, or roof reinforcement. House types

1) Somerford Keynes Pitched Slate roof (representative of many of the homes in the village)

2) Lower Mill Estate Pitched Slate roof (representative of many of the homes in the estate)

3) Metal roof (there are 12 so far)

4) Grass/metal roof (there are 3 so far)

5) Flat roof home – Many of these are a “sun deck”, meaning the roof space is also used for seating, so the panels will need to leave space for roof use and be installed in an aesthetically pleasing way (there are 7 so far)

Please provide pricing based on an individual home purchase and answer the next section for questions on the savings potential of the bulk purchase.

Solar Panels

Price for 4KW solar panels:

Price for anti-bird nets:

How many kWh of electricity would you project this would generate per year for the sample home:

Inverters

Price for inverters:

Optimisers

Price for optimisers:

Battery:

Price for ~5kWh battery:

Additional supplies:

Price for additional supplies and required components:

What do the additional supplies and components include (cables, mounting equipment, requirement management components, etc):

Installation

Installation labour price:

Installation equipment rental price (e.g. scaffolding):

Other installation prices:

What do the “other” installation prices include?:

Planning:

Survey price:

DNO certificate cost:

Planning permission preparation and submission cost:

Support

Mandatory support costs (if any):

Optional support costs:

What does the mandatory/optional support include and are the prices quoted per year, or something else?:

Options:

(Assume that these are purchased and installed at the same time as the rest of the system)

Price for supply and installation of a solar diverter to heat hot water when there is excess solar:

Price for supply and installation of additional recommended options:

What additional recommended options are included in the price above:

Prices for a larger solar panel array:

Prices for larger batteries:

Payment Terms

What percentage of the total price, or a fixed amount, do you require at the start:

Will any other invoices from you, or 3rd parties, need to be paid before the final installation is complete:

How long do you allow for acceptance and payment (i.e. number of days after installation is complete before you expect final payment):

We anticipate savings from a bulk purchase from a combination of volume pricing and efficiency/synergy savings

Savings

Please detail what price reductions you would offer based on a bulk purchase by ~80 homes for both the up front equipment/installation and support services:

Assumptions, Efficiencies and Synergies

What assumptions have you made on how we improve the efficiency of the installation, in the savings above:

Effects of scale

The exact number of homes that takeup the offer will depend on how they receive the proposed solution and if we decide to award to one or more suppliers.

Please describe the effect of scale on you bulk purchase savings proposal. For example are their particular numbers of home breakpoints that trigger greater or lesser savings?

Additional Homes

We may get additional homes joining the scheme later.

Are there any considerations with additional homes joining later, for example, deadlines, increased savings, etc:

Extending the scheme

We are considering extending our bulk purchase scheme to villages nearby our community.

Please describe how expanding the scale of the bulk buy could affect the project.

Are there any issues with expanding the bulk buy?:

Are there potential savings that expanding the bulk buy could yield?:

Broader Community Energy Project

The Thames Head Energy initiative has wider goals, including building community solar farm(s), transitioning heating from gas/oil to either a heat network or bulk purchased heat pumps, etc. See The Plan and RFI for more details.

Is there anything you could contribute to this broader initiative?