EnergyZone based in Cleobury Mortimer install air source heat pumps, solar PV systems and batteries. We had a chat with Andy Perkins, Founder.

• What did you do before starting the business? 

I studied mechanical and electrical engineering.

So I was working for a big engineering company in 1996 when I started installing solar thermal evacuated tubes, as a hobby really but they proved popular. It just really appealed to me, the idea of getting heat from nothing. 

• What were your motivations for starting the business? 

It’s always been about climate change – decarbonising as much as possible.

I grew up in the countryside. I care deeply about the natural world. I was brought up in Suffolk, but lived in Birmingham while at university, I didn’t much like being in the city so moved as soon as we could. We just happened to find Shropshire – we travelled west looking for somewhere green and we ended up in Cleobury Mortimer

Ironically both of my daughters now live in the city!

• How did you start up? How has the business grown?

There were always 2 goals – carbon reduction, but the product or the service has also got to make financial sense 

1998 I fit my first heat pump – which is still going strong today! 

2003 I set up EZSolar as it was then – doing renewables as a hobby. Back then a 4kW solar PV system cost £28000 so didn’t make any financial sense. Solar thermal had a 12 year payback so that did make sense, they were pretty popular

2010 The arrival of the Feed in Tariff was a bit of a gamechanger, we experienced strong growth in solar PV 

2012 was a really big bubble, which of course burst. We were ridiculously busy, we had 50 people working for us, fortunately a lot of subcontractors. The bubble burst when the Feed in Tariff was halved with 6 weeks notice. We had kept the other parts of the business going so we were insulated against the shock to a degree. 

2014 The Renewable Heat Incentive was introduced to support heat pumps and biomass heating, I’d say this helped with steady growth it wasn’t spectacular like the FiT had been.

Gradually we got more involved in new builds – people doing their own builds. They would want the whole package of heat pump, underfloor heating, cylinder, MVHR and solar. Several of the properties we’ve worked on have been featured on TV, on a very well known homebuilding programme – which I’m not allowed to name! Neither am I allowed to tell you which episodes/ which homes. One’s in Herefordshire though 

2018 When the FiT went entirely – PV had become so cheap it didn’t really matter

It’s been a matter of slow and steady growth out of choice – we’ve always taken a cautious approach to growth. We don’t want to employ lots of people and then sack them, and we want to be around to support our clients. We became very aware that lots of people had PV installed poorly and then were left with no after sales support – we received lots of calls for help

People want to install them but no one wants to look after them, and there are an awful lot of really bad installs out there – so we spend a lot of time going round fixing them!

• How many employees do you have now? 

Twenty

• Is recruitment now relatively easy? Is the younger generation looking for green jobs?

No! It’s a problem for us recruiting and keeping hold of good staff. Possibly because of where we are geographically – we always want to employ local people to cut down on travel.

We just started up in Cleobury Mortimer where I live – I needed premises and a local farmer had an old shed I could use. We’ve moved 3 times but always in Cleobury. 

We offer very flexible working hours. We’re definitely a forward thinking employer – accepting of people who have issues they’re working through – we’re a considerate employer.

We have high standards of what we expect from our employees so they don’t always stay. We take on apprentices – if they stick with us, we take them on. It takes 4-5 years to train up a good heating engineer and all our competitors want to poach them – especially Octopus

• So the business is being bought out by your employees? How does that work?

I wanted to focus a bit more on research & development and other projects, so I was looking for a way to hand the business on. Lots of people wanted to buy the company out – but I didn’t want to hand it over to someone who would break it up.  

I looked into Employee Ownership Trust schemes and I thought it would suit us. It means gradually the employees buy the company out over 5 years. The company profits are actually used to buy me out. Everyone has an equal number of shares, so long as they have enough years of service.

We’re in year 4 now. So right now 5 directors are running the company and I’m just an employee!

My daughter Anna works in the business, in marketing. But she’s not getting a share in the business – it’s one of the rules of the Employee Ownership Trust. It’s a shame for her.

• What products are growing in popularity and why? 

So the Feed in Tariff definitely drove growth in solar PV

The Renewable Heat Incentive took a while to get going. It took a bit of getting your head around so it wasn’t as popular as we hoped.

Now we have the Boiler Upgrade scheme also supporting heat pumps. I was one of the people involved, I was consulted on designing it. I think it works well, it’s very simple to operate, there’s nothing that puts the client off. Interest was steady while the level of support was at £5000, at £7500 that’s continued, it hasn’t gone crazy.

• What challenges are you facing as a business right now?

Educating people is the biggest challenge we have. There’s a lot of confusion and scaremongering out there about heat pumps.

The vast majority of the UK public believe that hydrogen is going to become the main fuel – it definitely won’t work and it won’t happen. It’s a myth that’s being extended by vested interests. That’s our biggest battle.

We used to do quite a lot of talks at exhibitions like the Homebuilding and Renovation Shows, at both the NEC and in London. We’d get heckled – that was great though, because we could come back at them with actual facts to bust their myths. Heat pumps have been operating for 80 years! In large parts of Northern Europe they’re the main form of heating. What does that tell you?

• So with all the ups and downs of schemes like the Feed in Tariff, and changes of Government policy – are you in favour of government support for green industry?

The Boiler Upgrade Scheme is better than most, the controls around it are pretty tight, such as MCS certification. And also fact that the client has a port of call to go back to if they’re not happy. First they should go to their installer, then they can go to the MCS accreditation board and ultimately to Ofgem.

My suggestion to the Government would be to put the green levies where they belong, on things that produce carbon such as gas, rather than electricity. If they did then the price of gas would go up around 3p/kWh, and electricity would go down by 5p/kWh. That would make heat pumps even more attractive to householders. 

• Yes that would make sense! Andy Perkins, founder of Energyzone, thank you very much

Thank you.