There is no answer to “who is the best solar installer”, and any page that claims to rank them is selling leads. What there is instead is a short list of checks that rule out most of the bad outcomes, and one of them changed in 2024 in a way that most websites, and most sales scripts, still have wrong.
Start here: accreditation is not CEC any more
For years the phrase to look for was “CEC accredited installer”. That is now out of date. In 2024 the Clean Energy Council handed installer and designer accreditation to a separate body, Solar Accreditation Australia, appointed by the Clean Energy Regulator. Installers had to move their accreditation across by 29 May 2024 to keep it.
This is not a naming detail. Only an SAA accredited installer can interact with the federal rebate scheme, which means only an SAA accredited installer can get you the STC discount. If a quote is going to have the rebate taken off it, an SAA accredited person has to sign off the install.
So the check is:
- Ask for the SAA accreditation number of the person who will be on your roof, not the company.
- Verify it on the Solar Accreditation Australia register yourself. It takes a minute.
- Be wary of anyone still marketing themselves purely as “CEC accredited” in 2026. It is not proof of anything current.
CEC Approved Solar Retailer is a different thing, and worth understanding rather than confusing. It is a voluntary code that a company signs up to, covering how it sells: contracts, deposits, complaints handling, marketing conduct. It says nothing about who climbs the ladder. It is a genuine signal about the sales process and it is not a substitute for checking the installer’s accreditation. Plenty of competent installers are not signed up, and being signed up does not make anyone a better electrician.
Who is actually doing the work
This is the question that separates two quotes at the same price, and it is the one most people never ask.
A large share of the Australian residential market is sold by one company and installed by whichever subcontract crew is in the area that week. That is not automatically bad work. What it does mean is that the person who quoted your roof is not the person who installs it, nobody carries knowledge of your site from one stage to the next, and when something goes wrong in year three, you are calling a call centre that has to find a crew willing to come back.
Ask directly:
- Is the crew employed by you, or subcontracted?
- Is the person who quotes the job the person who commissions it?
- Who comes out if there is a fault in two years, and are they the same people?
There is no wrong answer here, only an answer you should have before you sign. A subcontract model with a good local crew can be fine. A subcontract model where nobody can tell you which crew is coming usually is not.
Which warranties are real
Every quote carries three separate warranties and they are routinely blurred into one number in a sales conversation.
| Warranty | Typical term | Who honours it |
|---|---|---|
| Panel product | 10 to 15 years, better brands 25 | The manufacturer |
| Panel performance | 25 years, to around 85 percent output | The manufacturer |
| Inverter | 5 to 10 years, extendable | The manufacturer |
| Workmanship | 5 years is the industry norm | The installer |
The one that decides your experience is the last one, because it is the only one backed by a company that has to drive to your house. A twenty five year panel warranty is worth exactly as much as the manufacturer’s Australian presence in year fifteen, and a workmanship warranty is worth exactly as much as the installer still trading.
Two questions that cut through it:
- Who makes the claim if a panel fails in year eight? If the answer is “you contact the manufacturer”, that is a materially worse deal than “we handle it”.
- Does the manufacturer have an Australian office? A warranty serviced from overseas is a warranty with a freight bill attached.
What a quote must contain before you can compare it
Two quotes are not comparable unless both list the same things. A quote that gives you a system size and a price is not a quote, it is a number. Insist on:
- Panel make and exact model, not “tier 1 panels”. Tier 1 is a bankability rating for financiers, not a quality grade.
- Inverter make and exact model.
- Panel count and total kW, plus the inverter’s kW, so you can see the oversizing ratio.
- Estimated annual generation for your roof, with the orientation and tilt it assumes.
- The STC discount shown as a line, so you can see what the rebate is doing rather than a single “after rebate” figure.
- What is included in the electrical work: isolators, cabling run, and specifically whether a switchboard upgrade is included or excluded.
- Who lodges the Ergon connection application.
- The workmanship warranty term, in writing.
That last group is where surprise costs live. Switchboard upgrades are the single most common item quoted as an exclusion and then charged on the day.
The signals that should stop a conversation
- A discount that expires today. Solar pricing does not work that way. Time pressure is a sales technique, not a market condition.
- A price with no equipment models in it.
- A knock on the door. Reputable installers in regional Queensland do not need to doorknock.
- A “government rebate” presented as something they secured for you. The STC discount is federal, automatic and available through every accredited installer. Nobody gets you a better one.
- No site visit for a complex roof. A satellite image is fine for a simple rectangle of tin. It is not fine for a two storey, multi facet or tile roof.
Frequently asked questions
How do I check if a solar installer is accredited? Ask for the installer’s SAA accreditation number and check it on the Solar Accreditation Australia register. Check the person, not the company: the accreditation belongs to an individual.
Is a cheaper quote always worse? No, but you should be able to see where the difference is. If two quotes are $3,000 apart, the gap is normally in the inverter, the panel brand, or an exclusion like the switchboard. If you cannot find the gap in the paperwork, the gap is in something not written down.
Do I need three quotes? Two properly itemised quotes tell you more than five that only give a price. Once both list equipment models and inclusions, differences become obvious quickly.
What matters more, the panels or the inverter? The inverter, for reliability. It is the component that fails first and it is doing the hardest work. Panel choice matters most for degradation over decades, but you will notice an inverter failure long before you notice a half percent a year of extra panel drop.
Sources
- Clean Energy Regulator, appointment of the new accreditation scheme operator
- Solar Accreditation Australia, about accreditation
- Clean Energy Council, installer accreditation transfer
What to do next
Take the list above into whatever quotes you already have. If one of them is missing equipment models, the switchboard line or the workmanship term, ask for them in writing before comparing on price. Most of the difference between a good outcome and a bad one is visible on paper before anyone gets on the roof.
