The short version
We use Google Analytics to see which pages get read and where people give up. It sets cookies. Nothing is set until you press Accept, and if you press Reject nothing is set at all — not a reduced set, not “essential analytics”, nothing.
There is no advertising pixel, no remarketing tag, no chat widget, no heatmap recorder, no A/B testing tool and no social embed. If you have looked at other installers’ sites recently, that list is shorter than you are used to.
What is set if you accept
Google Analytics 4, which sets its own cookies to recognise a returning browser and stitch a visit together. We use it to answer three questions: which guides people actually read, where they stop reading, and whether anyone who reaches the estimator goes on to get in touch.
Accepting also grants advertising storage. Today that does nothing, because there is no advertising tag on this site to use it — but we would rather say so than have you find a granted permission you were not told about. If we ever do run ads, that is the permission they would use, and this page will say so before they appear.
What is set if you reject — or ignore the banner
Nothing. Consent defaults to denied before any script runs, so a visitor who never touches the banner is in the same position as one who rejected. The tag loads in a state where it cannot store anything or send anything identifiable.
The site works identically either way. No feature is withheld, nothing is degraded, and the estimator behaves exactly the same.
The one thing stored regardless
Your answer. We keep a small record in your browser’s local storage — solarbalcony_consent_v2 — so we do not ask again on every page. It holds your choice and the date you made it, and nothing else. That is not a tracking cookie; it is the record of you having been asked.
Changing your mind
There is a Change your cookie choice link at the very bottom of every page. It clears your saved answer and brings the banner back, so you can choose again. Withdrawing should be as easy as agreeing — anything else would be the dark pattern the banner itself is trying not to be.
It only appears once you have actually made a choice. If you have not, the banner is already there.
The estimator is not analytics
Worth separating, because they get confused. The estimator does its arithmetic in your browser and sends nothing. The one exception is the postcode, which our server looks up to find your MCS irradiance zone — described in full on the privacy page. That happens whether or not you accepted cookies, because it is how the page answers your question rather than how we measure you.
Fonts and other third parties
Manrope and JetBrains Mono are served from this site rather than a font CDN, so no third party is contacted to render the page. The hero photograph and everything else visual is served from here too.
Questions
Email sales@plugsun.co.uk. If you think something is being set that this page does not mention, we would genuinely like to know — tell us what you saw and we will either explain it or remove it.