By Patrick Sawer and Sarah Limbrick

A solar-power generating firm that uses Greta Thunberg to promote its products is being sued for more than £1.5 million damages over claims its panels led to a devastating house fire.

Mark and Sarah Evans are suing the award-winning firm Green Energy Electrical, which installed solar panels on their five-bedroom detached house in Essex. The Telegraph has the story.

The couple claim the catastrophic fire, which destroyed their home in April 2021, was caused either by a fault in one of the firm’s photovoltaic panels or a heating fault between a panel and electrical cables.

Essex-based Green Energy Electrical uses the example of Greta Thunberg’s activism over climate change as a way of encouraging customers to go solar.

Its website states: “Inspired by Greta Thunberg’s recent school strikes? Installing solar panels will reduce your carbon footprint as well as save you money on your energy bills.”

The firm rejects Mr and Mrs Evans’ claim, dismissing the couple’s theories of how the fire started as “speculative, inherently improbable, and not the most likely causes”.

Instead it said the fire in April 2021 was probably caused by someone else’s defective installation of electrical wiring in the roof, microcracking of panels caused during this work, and physical damage to parts of the panels, possibly when the roof was tiled around the solar panels, or when a chimney flue was put in for a wood-burning stove.

Mr and Mrs Evans said they paid Green Energy £4,627 for a solar-heating system with 14 panels to be fitted on their roof at Evershot Hall in Tolleshunt Knights, near Maldon, in 2017.

They said they cannot give details of the specific fault in the system that caused the fire, as it was completely destroyed in the fire.

But they claim the inferno was caused by a fault in the system and its negligent installation.

An independent witness saw smoke and flames coming from only the bottom-right solar panel, which is consistent with photos taken of the fire.

Firefighters from six fire stations put out the blaze, which also destroyed wall insulation.

Read the full story here .