Before you accept a solar quote, ask for a separate written assessment of the existing distribution board, earthing and bonding, because the Certificate of Compliance is issued for the whole electrical installation, not only the panels, inverter and battery. That assessment, and the remedial scope it produces, should sit outside the solar quote so you can see what is being certified and who is certifying it.
I was standing in my passage with the installer's torch aimed at the DB board. The geyser had just clicked off, the passage was hot, and the board sat high on the wall, a metal box with a strip of faded labels. I held the quote on my phone with my thumb on the line that said "CoC included." I thought that meant the new solar system. It didn't. The installer said they would "make a plan" with the existing board. I heard the words, but I didn't yet understand that the plan was not his to make alone.
That was the first time I understood that the certificate follows the house, not the quote.
The certificate is for the premises, not the panels
A solar CoC is not a product warranty for the inverter. It is a statement about the electrical installation at the point of commissioning, and the wiring standard, SANS 10142-1, applies to the premises as a system. The new solar work is added to wiring that already has a history: previous owners, previous additions, previous editions of the standard. The certifying registered person has to sign off the installation as it stands after the work, not just the new components.
That is why an old DB board matters. In older South African homes, the distribution board and circuits were often installed under an earlier edition of the wiring standard. The house may have run perfectly well for decades. It may never have tripped, never burned, never given anyone a reason to look inside the box. But "it has worked" and "it complies" are different statements. The CoC is about the second one.
I am not an electrician. I don't open covers, and I don't test anything. My part is the paperwork and the sequence. I keep the CoC in the same plastic sleeve as the municipal bill and the SSEG application, because those documents talk to each other. If the CoC is incomplete, the municipal file is incomplete.
What I heard on site, and what the quote didn't say
The proper assessment happens on site, which is why homeowners usually hear about defects after the solar installation has started. The team arrives, the rail goes up, the inverter is unpacked, and then someone opens the DB board and the conversation changes. That is not a conspiracy. It is a sequence problem. The quote was written before anyone stood in the passage with a torch.
I have seen the same look on other people's faces since. The installer is holding a screwdriver, the homeowner is holding a quote, and everyone is trying to work out whether the job has just got bigger or whether someone is being sold something. The worst version is the vague promise: "We'll make good the existing wiring." I don't accept that as a scope. It is not a line item; it is a sentence that hides a line item.
Earthing and bonding is the item that comes up again and again. It is also the one that stops a certificate. I don't need to know the technical detail to understand the commercial fact: if the earthing and bonding arrangement is missing or inadequate, the installation cannot be certified until a registered person has completed the remedial work and certified that part too. The solar section does not get signed off in isolation.
The document I now ask for before anyone starts
I ask for a written breakdown of which defects block certification, kept separate from the solar quote. Not a verbal list. Not a paragraph at the bottom of the quote. A separate page I can read next to the quote, with the solar scope on one side and the existing-installation scope on the other.
The schedule does not need to teach me electrical theory. It needs to tell me which items are blockers and which are recommendations. It needs to say who will complete each item and which registered person will certify it. If the solar installer is not doing the remedial work, I want that stated. If a separate electrician is doing it, I want the handover point written down. The certificate has to be issued by a registered person, and the person who signs the solar section needs the remedial work to be complete and certified before that signature is worth anything.
I also want the defect schedule dated and tied to the quote revision. A list that floats free of the quote is hard to negotiate. A list attached to a revision is something I can compare. That is how I judge whether the remedial scope is reasonable: not by the total, but by whether each blocker has a named owner and a certificate behind it.
Remedial work is its own handover
The mistake I made was treating the solar quote as the whole project. It wasn't. The solar quote covered panels, inverter, mounting, labour and "CoC." The existing installation was a separate piece of work that happened to be triggered by the solar job.
Now I treat remedial work as its own handover. The registered person completes the work on the existing installation, certifies that work, and then the solar section can be signed off. That order matters. If the solar team finishes first and the remedial work is still open, the homeowner is left holding an installation that is physically complete but administratively stuck.
I don't ask the solar installer to hide that in the main price. I ask for it to be visible. I would rather see two documents and know what each one covers than see one tidy total and discover later that the tidy total left the old board out.
Questions I ask in the quote meeting
I ask whether the existing DB board and earthing and bonding have been assessed, and whether that assessment is included in the quote or excluded. I ask for the answer in writing, because "we'll check on the day" is not a scope.
I ask who the registered person is who will issue the CoC, and whether that person has seen the existing installation. I ask whether the remedial work will be done by the same team or by a separate registered person. I ask what happens if the assessment finds a blocker after the solar installation has started. I ask for the defect schedule before the first drill goes in, not after.
And I ask one question that has saved me the most trouble: "What is excluded from this quote?" The answer tells me more than the inclusions. A quote that admits its exclusions is easier to trust than one that promises a clean certificate without looking at the house.
Not every old board is a problem
I don't want to turn this into a scare story. An old board is not automatically a failed board. Age alone does not tell you whether the installation complies. Some older installations are in good order and the solar work can proceed with a straightforward assessment. Some are not. The point is not that old equals bad. The point is that the existing installation is part of the certification boundary, and nobody can know where the boundary sits without looking.
That is also why I won't put a number on remedial work here. The scope depends on what the registered person finds, what the local authority requires, and how the work is sequenced. Anyone who quotes a remedial figure before seeing the installation is guessing. I would rather have a proper assessment and a written scope than a cheap guess that turns into a variation later.
The CoC is not the last document in the solar project. It is the document that tells you whether the project is actually finishable. If the old DB board is going to stop it, I want to know before the panels are on the roof, not after.
