How to choose a solar installer.

Choosing a solar installer is harder than it should be. Every company says it is MCS-certified, every quote says premium panels, and the only number that differs is the price — which is exactly the number that tells you least.

We install solar for a living, so read this with that in mind. What follows is the list of checks we would want a member of our own family to run, and several of them are checks we would have to pass too.

1. Ask for the MCS certificate number

MCS is the certification that actually matters, because it is what makes your system eligible for export payments through the Smart Export Guarantee. Without it you can still generate electricity, but you cannot be paid for what you send back to the grid.

Ask for the number and check it on the MCS website. Every genuine installer has one and hands it over without pausing. Hesitation here is the end of the conversation.

Three more worth having: TrustMark (government-endorsed quality), RECC (covers how you are treated as a consumer, including deposits and cancellation rights) and NAPIT (electrical competence).

2. Find out who will actually be on your roof

This is the question fewest people ask and it changes the most.

A lot of solar companies sell the job and pass the work to whoever is available locally. The people who quoted it are not the people who fit it, and when something needs sorting out afterwards, nobody quite owns it.

Ask directly: will your own installers do this, or a subcontractor? A straight answer either way tells you something. An evasive one tells you more.

3. Compare what is in the quote, not the number at the bottom

Get three quotes. Then ignore the totals for a moment and check each one contains:

• Exactly which panels — make, model, wattage, how many
• Which inverter, and whether it is hybrid (battery-ready)
• Which battery, its usable capacity, and where it will be installed
• Scaffolding — included or not, and for how many roof faces
• The DNO application — the permission your network operator has to give before the system can export
• Who handles certification and the paperwork

A quote missing three of these is not cheaper than one that includes them. It is incomplete, and the difference appears later.

4. Check the price was calculated, not guessed

Nobody can price your roof without seeing it. Roof size, how many separate faces the panels sit across, whether scaffolding is straightforward, shading, and how much storage you want all move the figure substantially.

A price quoted over the phone before anyone has looked is a starting position, not a price. Ours are set out in the pricing guide so you can see what typically drives them, but the real number still needs your actual roof.

5. Separate the equipment warranty from the workmanship guarantee

These get blurred together and they are not the same thing.

Panels are normally warranted around 25 years and batteries around 10 — but those are manufacturer warranties covering the equipment. They say nothing about the quality of the installation.

So ask separately: what covers the workmanship, and does that cover survive if the company stops trading? An insurance-backed guarantee is the answer to the second half, and it is the half that matters if a small firm disappears in five years.

6. Read the reviews properly

Star ratings are close to useless on their own. What is worth reading:

• Do the reviews describe the actual job — the roof, the system, the day — or are they generic praise?
• Does the company reply? Especially to anything critical.
• Are they spread over time, or twenty in one week?
• Is there a bad one, and how was it handled? A company with only perfect reviews has either done very few jobs or is not showing you everything.

7. Watch for the warning signs

These are the ones worth walking away from:

• Pressure to sign today. A genuine price is still there next week.
• A discount that expires on the doorstep. That is a sales tactic, not a price.
• No written quote.
• A price before a survey.
• Reluctance about the MCS number.
• A quote that does not say where the battery goes. Moving a fitted battery later means a second visit, a second cable run and a second set of certificates.

Run these on us too

It would be a poor guide if it did not apply to the company that wrote it. So: our MCS certificate number is NAP/79987/26/1. We are registered with MCS, TrustMark, NAPIT, RECC and IWA. We use our own installers rather than subcontractors, with a company owner on site for every installation, and the work is covered by an insurance-backed guarantee.

We have completed over 150+ installations since 2023 and we are based in Chadwell Heath, Essex. If your roof is not worth doing, we will tell you — our roof suitability guide sets out the cases where we say no.

Ask us all seven. Ask everyone else the same seven. That is the whole point of the list.

Published 25 August 2026 by ECONEXIS, MCS-certified installers based in Chadwell Heath, Essex.