*Lorcan Hassett Photograph: Tom Micks
LOCAL businessman Lorcan Hassett has been appointed by Swyft Energy to assist residents, farmers and business people in their transition to solar energy.
Swyft Energy already has a foothold nationally in the domestic and agri space and is now looking to grow its commercial customer base.
Solar PV is a cleaner energy source which has proven to significantly reduce energy bills for people across Ireland. Swyft Energy is one of Ireland’s leading installers of Solar PV for commercial, agriculture and domestic buildings and has completed 12,500 installations since 2017.
Quin resident Lorcan Hassett joined the team this month as commercial business development manager. Based in Clare, he is encouraging people across Ireland to make use of the impressive range of grants available to customers switching to Solar PV.
Whether the customer is residential, commercial or agriculture, you can call Lorcan directly to begin your journey of securing your grant in hassle-free manner, and ultimately the installation of Solar PV by the experts at Swyft Energy.
Lorcan is known throughout the county for work as a BER assessor with his own company Clare Energy while he previously worked as a commercial applications engineer for GE Sensing EMEA quoting commercial oil and gas projects up to €30m.
Lorcan, who won an All-Ireland club medal with Doora-Barefield in 1999, says he’s excited about the new challenge. “There are about 240 installers around the country so the market is very competitive but we like to think we have an excellent offering.”
Lorcan tells The Clare Echo that Swyft Energy has a strong customer base in the farming community however he is calling on all business people and residents to get in touch to learn about grants and finance options available to them. Householders can avail of a reference code for a discount by calling Lorcan and all jobs are quoted free of cost.
“I’m happy to inform people about the array of grants that are available to the public,” Lorcan tells The Clare Echo.
He outlines that grants for domestic properties go up to €2,100 + VAT, while SEI grants for commercial building range from €2,400 up to €162,000 depending on the job requirements. “The procedure can take between six to eight weeks so there’s a great financial benefit.”
He continues, “The targeted agricultural modernisation scheme (TAMS) is very popular with farmers, you can have an enhanced grant rate of up to 60 per cent for your system. Thanks to these incentives the payback for farmers can be as low as three years, a domestic system would typically payback in six or seven years. This is very popular with farmers and it is something I would encourage farmers to look at.”
Lorcan notes that the approval process takes about three months and the grant is capped at €90,000 with the added benefit that a dwelling house in the agricultural space can be included in the grant funding. “If you’re overproducing you can sell this electricity back to the grid at rates starting at 12c per kw hour,” he adds.
OFFSETBusinesses investing in Solar PV can avail of the Accelerated Capital Allowance (ACA), a tax incentive that promotes investment in energy efficient products & equipment. This scheme allows a sole trader, farmer or company that pays corporation tax or income tax on trading or professional income in Ireland to deduct the full cost of the equipment from their profits in the year of purchase.“You can offset any losses in the business against the value of the system at 12.5 per cent so this is a big saving for business,” says Lorcan.
There are a wide range of funding options available at competitive interest rates which Lorcan is also on hand to assist customers with.
From start to finish, Swyft Energy will assist the client on grant applications, assist with finance options, while the expert team of technicians will complete the Solar PV installation using solar panels, inverters and batteries locally from Fáilte Solar.
Lorcan has a word of assurance for those concerned by the initial investment outlay, “You will see savings straight away in the first bill that you get. Keep a log of your previous bills and it will be very, very clear.”
Call Lorcan Hassett on 0874176640 or visit www.swyftenergy.ie/
