How it works
No sales visit. You send your bills and three photographs, and get the sums back.
Everything up to the recommendation happens without anyone in your house. You send a year of electricity bills and photographs of your meter, your fuse board and where the battery would go. An electrician reads them, and you get a system size, a price, a payback period and the amount we earn if you go ahead.
Your bills and your meter do most of the work.
What happens after you send them
Read by a person, not a queue
Our team reads every bill, meter and fuse board photograph themselves — not a script, not an algorithm. We aim to get your written recommendation back to you within one working day, and if anything needs checking with an installer first, we tell you rather than leaving you waiting on a date we haven't confirmed.
Start to finish
What actually happens
Seven steps. You can stop at any of them, and the first three cost you nothing.
Check your savings
Four questions: your postcode, what you spend, whether you charge a car at home, and what else you run. You get an estimate of what a battery would save you before you send us anything personal. If the answer is that it would not pay back, that is where this stops.
Send your bills and three photographs
A year of electricity bills, your meter, your fuse board and where the battery would go. An electrical inspection certificate (EICR) helps if you have one — why each one matters is set out below.
We read them and write back within one working day
You get a system size, an installed price, the annual saving, the payback period, and the amount we will be paid if you go ahead — in pounds, next to the price. You also see the sizes we considered and which we would choose for your house. Or we tell you not to buy, and which part of the sums made it a no. It ends with the offer of twenty minutes on the phone with our team, booked by you if you want it.
The installer we introduce you to surveys the house
This is the first time anyone comes to you. The survey either confirms the size and the price or changes them, and the installer explains which. From this point your contract is with the installer, not with us.
The installer deals with your network operator
A 20 kWh system on a 3.68 kW inverter is fitted first and the operator told within 28 days. Larger systems, from 30 kWh, need the operator's agreement before anything is fitted. That is the step most likely to add weeks, and it is outside everyone's control.
Installation
One and a half to three days depending on the size. The battery and its inverter are fitted and wired into your fuse board (your consumer unit), and your supply is off for part of it.
Commissioning, then your tariff
The installer commissions the system and shows you the app that controls it. Moving to an off-peak tariff is the last step and you do it yourself. We will tell you which tariffs fit how you use electricity, but we do not arrange the switch and no supplier pays us anything.
Would rather speak to someone before sending anything? Give us a call, weekdays — if nobody answers straightaway, leave a message and we will call you back.
Call usWhat we ask for
What we ask for, and why
A year of electricity bills. Winter and summer use differ, and a battery earns on the whole pattern. An annual statement from your supplier's app is best. If your bills are estimates, send them anyway and tell us.
Your smart meter display. Tells us whether your meter can take a half-hourly off-peak tariff. If it cannot, the whole idea does not work, and we would rather find that out now than after a survey. Not sure if yours is smart? If it has a digital screen and your supplier stopped asking for readings, it almost certainly is.
Your fuse board. Tells the electrician what your house can carry and whether there is room to work. It is also how we spot the homes that need electrical work first.
Where the battery could go. Dry, out of direct sun, not a bedroom or loft, and as near the fuse board as possible — the distance sets part of the price.
Your EICR, if you have one. The certificate from your last electrical inspection. Most people do not have one to hand, which is fine — send the fuse board photograph and we will tell you whether an inspection is needed before anything else happens.
We ask for a mobile number so we can tell you when your recommendation is ready. What happens to the photographs afterwards is set out in our privacy notice.
Doing this for a parent or someone else in the house? The photographs do not have to come from the same person who answers the four questions — send them this list of what is needed and they can take the photographs themselves.
A year of bills and three photographs, taken on a phone.
The boundary
Who is responsible for what
We do not install anything and we never hold your money. You pay the installer directly, on their terms, and they hold the MCS certification, the workmanship responsibility and the paperwork for your system.
What we are responsible for is the advice: the sizing, the sums behind it, and telling you plainly when the answer is no. If you and the installer end up disagreeing, we stay in it — the complaints page sets out who to go to, in what order, and what we can and cannot do about it.
The installer holds the certification and does the work.
The arrangement
How we are paid
We work out whether a battery pays for your house and, if it does, introduce you to an installer. We do not install anything. The installer pays us a percentage of the installed price when the work is finished. You pay the installer directly and never pay us.
Here's the honest version: a bigger job could be worth more to whoever pays that fee, and we're the ones recommending the size. We size to the window your cheap rate gives you rather than to your budget, because a battery bigger than that window can fill does not save you any more, so we will not recommend one. And when your recommendation arrives, the amount we will be paid on your job is shown in pounds, next to the price.
Below £200 a month on electricity we will tell you a battery is not worth buying yet. Between £200 and £300 a month a battery usually needs an electric car or a hot tub to pay back inside seven years, and your estimate will say so. More on how that works, including when the honest answer is a tariff switch and nothing else.
A bigger battery than your overnight window can fill.
The awkward questions
What people ask before they send anything
Do I need solar panels?
No, and nothing goes on your roof. The saving comes from buying electricity overnight at the cheap rate and using it during the day, so a battery works on its own. If you already have panels it works alongside them.
How long does the whole thing take?
A typical elapsed time from agreeing to a survey to commissioning is still to be confirmed — we would rather publish a real figure once we have installations to measure it against.
The part that varies is the network operator's response, not the installation itself. Whoever tells you a date before the survey is guessing. A 20 kWh system on a 3.68 kW inverter is fitted first and the operator told within 28 days. Larger systems, from 30 kWh, need the operator's agreement before anything is fitted.
What does a system cost?
Pricing is pending — HES is a new business, and installed prices across the launch sizes will be confirmed once our installer partner's rate card is agreed.
You pay the installer, in full, on their terms. We do not offer finance at the moment, so if the price only works for you spread over time, this is not ready for you yet and we would rather say so here than after you have sent photographs. Prices include VAT at 5%. If your installation will be completed before 31 March 2027 you can remove the 5% on your estimate and see the difference; from 1 April 2027 it always applies.
I do not have an EICR. Does that rule me out?
No. Most homes do not have one to hand. Send the fuse board photograph instead and we will tell you whether an electrical inspection is needed before anything else happens.
Can I speak to a person?
Yes — use the Call us button on this page, weekdays. It is a small team, so it is not answered every hour of the day; leave a message and you will get a call back rather than a sales sequence.
What happens to my bill and my photographs?
They are used to work out your recommendation and shared with the installer we introduce you to, if you ask for an introduction. We do not sell them and we do not pass them to anyone else. The privacy notice says how to ask us to delete them.
See what your own house would save
Four questions, then you decide whether to send the photographs. If a battery is not worth it for your house, that answer is free and you will see the workings.