Cookie Policy

A cookie is a small text file that a website asks your browser to store and hand back on your next request. It is how a site recognises that two page views came from the same browser — which is what makes staying signed in, remembering your country, and measuring how many people read a guide possible at all.

This policy also covers the technologies that do a similar job, all of which we treat as cookies for consent purposes:

• Local storage and session storage — browser storage that holds slightly larger values, such as your unit preference or an unsent calculator input. Unlike cookies, it is not sent with every request.
• Pixels and web beacons — a tiny transparent image or script that records that a page or email was opened.
• Software development kits and tags — code supplied by a third party, such as an analytics or advertising provider, which may set its own cookies.

Cookies set by SolarBazaar itself are first-party cookies. Cookies set by another company whose content or service appears on our pages — an advertising network, an embedded video — are third-party cookies, and that company decides what they contain.

These make the site work. Without them pages break, sign-in fails, or the site becomes vulnerable to attack. Because they are essential to a service you have asked for, PECR allows us to set them without consent — which also means they cannot be switched off from within SolarBazaar.

• Session cookie — ties your sequence of page requests together so the site knows one request follows another.
• Authentication cookie — keeps you signed in as you move between pages, so you do not have to re-enter your password on every click.
• Security cookies — carry the anti-forgery token that proves a form submission came from our page, and support rate limiting and bot detection.
• Country selection — remembers the market you are browsing so prices, incentives and regulations stay relevant. We treat this as necessary because the wrong country makes much of the site actively misleading.
• Consent record — stores the cookie choices you made, so we can honour them and prove they were made. Ironically, refusing this one would mean we had to ask you again on every page.
• Load balancing — keeps your session on a consistent server while you are using the site.

These cookies do not track you across other websites and are not used for advertising.

Analytics cookies tell us how SolarBazaar is actually used, so we can fix what is broken and write more of what people find useful. They are only set if you consent.

They help us measure:

• How many people visit, how many are new, and how many come back.
• Which guides, product pages and calculators are used, and which are abandoned part-way through.
• Which sites, searches and campaigns brought you here.
• How long pages take to load, and which errors visitors hit, broken down by device, browser and country.

We look at this in aggregate. We do not use analytics to identify you personally, we do not sell analytics data, and where our providers support IP anonymisation we enable it. If you decline analytics cookies, nothing about the site changes for you — we simply learn less about how to improve it.

SolarBazaar is free, and advertising pays for the research, the data and the calculators. Advertising cookies are set by our advertising partners, and only with your consent.

• Frequency capping — remembers which adverts you have already seen so the same one is not repeated at you all day.
• Relevance — selects adverts likely to be of interest, based on the page you are reading and, where you have consented to personalisation, on your previous browsing.
• Measurement and attribution — counts impressions and clicks so advertisers know what they paid for and we get paid correctly.
• Fraud prevention — detects automated or fraudulent clicks.

If you decline advertising cookies you will still see adverts. They will be contextual — chosen from the subject of the page rather than from anything about you.

We use Google AdSense to fill some of the advertising space on SolarBazaar. Google is a third-party vendor and uses cookies to serve adverts on this site. Google and its partners may use cookies to serve adverts to you based on your prior visits to SolarBazaar and to other websites.

Google’s advertising cookies are set on Google-controlled domains such as the DoubleClick advertising domain, and typically include:

• An advertising cookie of the “__gads” or “__gpi” type, set on our own domain, used to measure ad interactions and limit how often the same advert repeats.
• A DoubleClick cookie of the “IDE” or “test_cookie” type, set on Google’s advertising domain, used to select adverts and to measure whether one led to an action.
• A personalisation and fraud-detection cookie of the “NID” type, used to remember advertising preferences and to detect invalid traffic.

We name these generically because Google changes cookie names and durations without notice. The authoritative, current list is published by Google at policies.google.com/technologies/ads.

You can opt out of personalised advertising from Google at Google Ads Settings, and from many other vendors at once at aboutads.info/choices. For visitors in the UK and the EEA, Google’s ad personalisation on this site runs only where consent has been given.

Preference cookies remember the choices you make so the site behaves the way you left it. They are convenience, not necessity, so they are set on consent — except for country selection, which we treat as necessary for the reason given in section 2.

• Country and market — which market’s prices, incentives and suppliers you want to see.
• Units and currency — kW or kWp, metric or imperial, and the currency figures are shown in.
• Saved view settings — grid or list layout, sort order, comparison columns and filters you last applied.
• Interface state — dismissed notices, and whether the newsletter prompt has already been shown to you.

If you decline these, the site still works — it just forgets your choices between visits.

Some content on SolarBazaar is served by other companies, and that content can set its own cookies which we do not control.

• Embedded video — where we embed a video, the video platform may set cookies to remember playback quality and volume and to count views. Where the option is available we use the privacy-enhanced embed mode, which delays cookies until you press play.
• Social media — share buttons and embedded posts can set cookies that let the social network recognise you, whether or not you interact with them.
• Advertising networks — as described in sections 4 and 5.

These companies are responsible for their own cookies and publish their own cookie and privacy policies. Blocking third-party cookies in your browser is an effective way to stop most of them, and it will not stop SolarBazaar from working.

Session cookies are deleted as soon as you close your browser. Persistent cookies stay until they reach their expiry date or you delete them. Typical durations on SolarBazaar are below; third-party durations are set by the third party and may change.

We ask for your cookie choices again at least once every 12 months, which is the practice the UK regulator expects, and sooner if what we use changes materially.

You can control cookies in your browser at any time, which applies to every site you visit:

• Google Chrome — Settings › Privacy and security › Third-party cookies, and Settings › Privacy and security › Delete browsing data to clear existing cookies.
• Safari — Settings (or Preferences) › Privacy, where you can block all cookies and manage website data. On iOS: Settings › Apps › Safari › Block All Cookies.
• Mozilla Firefox— Settings › Privacy & Security › Enhanced Tracking Protection, and Cookies and Site Data to clear or manage exceptions.
• Microsoft Edge — Settings › Cookies and site permissions › Manage and delete cookies and site data.

Most browsers also offer a private or incognito window, which discards all cookies when you close it. To withdraw a consent choice you have already given, clear SolarBazaar cookies for this site in your browser and you will be asked again on your next visit. You can also write to info@solarbazaar.io and we will action the request.

Blocking strictly necessary cookies will break the site. You will not be able to sign in, forms will fail with a security error, your country selection will be lost on every page, and we will have to ask for your cookie preferences repeatedly because we cannot remember your answer. If you block only third-party or advertising cookies, SolarBazaar will continue to work normally.

In the UK, the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR) and, in the EEA, the ePrivacy Directive require your consent before any non-essential cookie is set. We follow that rule, and we apply the same standard to visitors everywhere rather than running two versions of the site.

• When you first visit, a banner explains the categories and asks for your choice. Nothing beyond strictly necessary cookies is set before you answer.
• Rejecting is as easy as accepting — both are one click, presented with equal prominence. Continuing to scroll is not treated as consent.
• You can accept some categories and refuse others; consent is not all-or-nothing, and refusing does not lock you out of any content.
• We record what you chose and when, so we can honour it and evidence it if asked.

You can withdraw consent at any time, using the cookie settings link in the footer. Withdrawal takes effect immediately for any cookie we control; cookies already stored by third parties may need to be cleared in your browser as well. Withdrawing consent does not make what happened before it unlawful.

How the resulting data is used, and the rights you have over it, are covered in our Privacy Policy.

We update this policy when the cookies we use change, when a provider changes theirs, or when the law or regulatory guidance moves. The effective date at the top of this page shows when the current version took effect. If a change adds a new category of non-essential cookie, we will ask for your consent again before setting it.

Questions about cookies, or about anything else concerning your data, go to info@solarbazaar.io, or use our contact form. MAKSOF GLOBAL LTD is the controller for the personal data described here and is registered in England and Wales (16119838).