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Smiley Sansoni is the go-to guy for solar on the Southern Moreton Bay Islands.
Home to roughly 8000 people, including many retirees, the four islands nestled between Brisbane and Stradbroke have a booming population thanks to dirt-cheap land.
Sansoni operates on Macleay Island – the second largest of the four – as the face of two solar companies run out of a strip mall shopfront, Watts Up Solar and Electrical and East West Electrical and Solar.
Darren Hemmings and Susan Austen turned to Watts Up for their solar systems. But after spending months of fighting, they now wish they had never met Sansoni.
In October 2025, the couple had already bought one solar system and battery through Sansoni for their small Macleay Island home. They were looking to upgrade to a whole-of-house set-up with a larger battery after the widespread blackouts on the islands caused by Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
But Austen said she was adamant she only wanted the upgrade if it did not make the existing system – which they got in 2024 for $15,000 – redundant.
Hemmings and Austen claimed Sansoni told them the two systems could work together during meetings held to design the new system.
In the contract for the new set-up, which came in at $22,000 after rebates, Sansoni gave them a simple assurance. “We do it once, we do it right! … Not all solar companies are the same!” he wrote.
“With over 400,000 electrically unsafe homes and 700 liquidated solar companies in the past decade, who you choose to install your solar is more important than the system itself.”
The contractor employed by Watts Up for the solar installation was electrician Asadullah Abdullah.
The couple said that when Abdullah arrived, he told them the systems would not work together. He called Sansoni, who suggested a solution involving an inverter that he would drop off.
Another electrician, Eugene Clark, who they later learned was the director of Watts Up, was also on site at the time. The couple said they were told he was also a contractor.
There were 20 panels delivered, but of a different brand than stipulated in the contract.
“We signed that contract based on a) the Alpha system wouldn’t be redundant, and b) they knew what they were doing,” Hemmings said.
Later, Sansoni emailed the couple, threatening to charge nearly $1000 a month in rent for the system if they did not pay installation costs in full, and warned they were running out of time to claim a $15,000 battery rebate.
Through the contract with Watts Up for the 20 panels, a 50 kilowatt battery and a 25 kilowatt inverter, the company stood to receive more than $16,000 in government subsidies.
An independent inspection by another electrician found 13 issues with the work.
It deemed the installation of “very poor standard” and said it presented “a danger to the safety of the home and its occupants”.
“The overall workmanship appears substantially below that expected for an installation of this complexity,” the inspector wrote, adding he thought Queensland’s Electrical Safety office (ESO) and other authorities should investigate the situation.
When the couple confronted Sansoni at his workplace, he claimed he never said the systems would “work together” but that they could work at the same time.
When the conversation became heated, the salesman snapped, telling Hemmings and Austen: “Don’t f--king talk shit now, we don’t keep stock on the island.”
Sansoni said his 17 years in the solar game gave him the experience he needed to design solar systems, which he admitted to doing for most of the systems he sold.
“I’ve got a lot better design skills than those boys, let me tell you,” he said.
Sansoni told the couple to leave. Hemmings told Sansoni to call the police if he had an issue with them.
“I’ll f--king kill you, now f--king get out of here,” Sansoni said, raising his voice.
When this masthead visited the couple last week – the better part of a year after the solar upgrade – their old battery sat in their carport.
ESO investigators visited the house on Tuesday as part of an investigation. The couple have also complained to the Office of Fair Trading and through the New Energy Tech Consumer Code.
Hemmings and Austen said they do not want anyone else to have an experience like theirs.
They said they have withheld payments from Watts Up.
Of the 565 inspections of home batteries in Queensland conducted by the Clean Energy Regular, 437 were considered substandard, but just five were deemed unsafe.
The CER conducts safety checks at random, as does Electrical Safety Queensland.
While some islanders told this masthead they had had positive interactions with Sansoni, another alleged the systems he designed were problematic.
John Anthony, a retired police officer on Russell Island, said he could not reach Sansoni after his system was installed and was acting up.
Eventually, he got another electrician to fix what turned out to be a minor problem.
Anthony’s contract showed Watts Up claimed a $5300 rebate from the government for the $33,000 system, which he paid for through a no interest loan with a waived cooling-off period.
Like Hemmings and Austen, Anthony thought Sansoni ran Watts Up.
“I was under the impression that it was his business,” Anthony said.
In the confrontational meeting with Hemmings and Austen, Sansoni he said he was the salesman, and he and Eugene Clark ran Watts Up together. Company records show Clark is its sole director.
When contacted by this masthead, Clark said he would not comment other than to say Hemmings had an agenda.
In an interview with this masthead, Sansoni repeated that he was just a salesman for the company.
He said he was not the owner of any solar company on the island and denied designing any systems.
“It’s up to the electricians to do their own designs, really,” he said.
Sansoni said he was not responsible for any installation work organised by either Watts Up or East West.
“I have nothing to do with the management of it, the installation of it, the design of it, anything, mate – I’m just a sales guy,” he said.
East West Solar and Electrical uses the electrical licence of Abdullah, the electrician who worked on Hemmings and Austen’s system, but has Sansoni’s number listed on its website.
Abdullah did not respond to questions sent on Monday.
These are not the only solar companies Sansoni has been involved in. He was a director of Solar Corporation of Australia which was deregistered in 2018 after a liquidator was appointed in 2013.
Sansoni said that was an importing and wholesale company that “went by the way when China invaded Australia … with their panels”.
It is also not the first time Sansoni has been involved in a company that profited from a booming industry subject to government grants.
In 2010, an investigation by this masthead found Sansoni’s company Queensland State Insulation had been blacklisted by the government from the now infamous “pink batts” insulation scheme for receiving rebates to install insulation in three homes when the service wasn’t provided.
In that case, Sansoni said it was the fault of dodgy contractors who had not done their job.
These days, he said unhappy customers are just part of the game.
“We’ve been in business for a long time. Maybe if you’ve been in business you’d know the same – you’re never going to keep all the people happy all the time.”
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