A solar quote should identify the roof, the distribution board and the cable route before it puts a number on the page. If the quote does not say whether the roof structure and covering were assessed for panel mounting, how much spare breaker space the existing DB board actually has, and where the inverter and the cables will run, then the price covers the system and leaves the site to you. That second invoice arrives on installation day, once the scaffold is up and the bakkie is already offloaded.
The crew arrived at seven. Two guys, one ladder, one clipboard. The man with the clipboard walked the perimeter of the house with his head tilted back, counting roof sheets, and then asked me a single question. Where is the DB board?
That was it. That was the site assessment. The panel count, the inverter size, the battery, all of it had been decided in an office somewhere from a street address and a municipal bill. Nobody had been on the roof. Nobody had opened the DB cover. By half past nine that morning, both of those things had happened, and the quote had already changed shape.
The roof is a structure, not a surface
Two tiles came off near the ridge and the mounting plan that came with the quote no longer fitted what was underneath it. My place is an older suburban house, concrete tiles on timber trusses, with a covering that had been patched twice and a vent pipe whose flashing had been quietly failing for years. The quote said "tile roof, standard mount." Standard was doing a lot of work in that sentence.
What I wanted, and what I did not get, was a line saying the roof had been inspected and what the inspector found. Panels load the structure. If the trusses run the way the original builder ran them, if the battens have gone soft in one section, if the covering is brittle enough that simply lifting tiles is a repair in itself, all of that is knowable before the day. None of it is knowable from a satellite image.
Roof reinforcement and waterproofing usually sit outside a solar quote by default. That is a fair commercial position, but only if the quote says so out loud. What hurts is the version where it says nothing at all, where the exclusions list is empty and the assumption is buried three pages in under "standard installation conditions."
If you are reading a quote right now, look for an explicit statement that the roof structure and covering have been assessed, and an explicit list of what happens if that assessment finds a problem. Two sentences is enough. Silence is not.
The DB board is where the real number lives
Here is the thing nobody mentions at the braai. On a lot of South African houses, the distribution board is the tightest constraint in the whole job.
Mine had no spare ways. Not one. The earth leakage unit covered essentially the whole house on one circuit, which is fine until you start splitting out essential loads, and then you are looking at a board that has to be rebuilt rather than extended. That is not a small line item and it is not a solar component. It is electrical work that has to happen before the inverter can be commissioned.
A quote should tell you how many spare ways it assumed. It should say whether the existing earth leakage is staying, being split, or being replaced. It should state whether surge protection is included, because the wiring code has expectations around that and it is easy to leave off a bill. It should say whether the existing enclosure is large enough to hold what is being added, and if it is not, where the new one goes and how far the cables have to travel to reach it.
And it should be honest about who carries the risk if the board turns out to be worse than the photo suggested. Old boards hide things. Aluminium wiring in the older suburbs, an undersized main breaker, a busbar that a geyser circuit has been cooking for thirty years. Any one of those turns a tidy installation into a rewire, and the conversation about who pays for it happens on your driveway, not in a meeting.
The route between the roof and the meter
Cable routes and inverter position are two decisions that should be made before the quote is written, not on the morning.
Where the inverter goes decides almost everything downstream. A garage wall is convenient and usually cool, but if the DB is on the far side of the house you are paying for a long AC run in conduit, possibly through two brick walls and across a passage ceiling. Put the inverter beside the DB and you shorten that run, but you may be putting electronics in a small hot room with no ventilation. Neither choice is wrong. What is wrong is a quote that does not say which one it priced.
The same applies to the DC run down from the roof. Over tiles, through the ceiling, behind a gutter, into the roof space. Each route carries a labour implication the quote should own up to. If the installer discovers on the day that the ceiling is tongue-and-groove with no access hatch, that is half a day nobody budgeted for, and you will be the one absorbing it.
This does not require a design drawing. It requires a paragraph. Something along the lines of: inverter to be mounted on the garage wall adjacent to the DB, cable route through the roof space and down the external wall in trunking, one wall penetration. Four lines. It prevents an argument.
Paperwork runs on its own clock
What surprised me most was how much of the delay was not physical at all.
A grid-tied system in South Africa has to work with the municipal connection rules, and the interface protection requirements sit in NRS 097-2-1. The installation itself has to comply with SANS 10142-1 and be signed off with a Certificate of Compliance by someone holding the right registration. If you are going the SSEG application route with your municipality, that application wants the CoC, a single-line diagram, and the inverter documentation.
The sequence matters more than people expect. The electrical upgrade has to be completed before commissioning. The CoC has to be issued after the work is done and before the municipality will look at the application. If the DB upgrade was never in the quote, it was never in the schedule either, and you discover the gap when the installer has packed up and you are waiting on a piece of paper before you can legally switch the system on.
Good quotes show that sequence. Weak quotes show a delivery date and nothing behind it.
There is also a responsibility question that goes unanswered far too often. Who lodges the SSEG application, you or the installer? Who books the CoC inspection? If the roof needs structural work, does the solar company arrange it or do you? If the DB needs replacing, is that your electrician or theirs? Any of these can be answered in one line in the quote. Unanswered, they become three separate delays that each look like someone else's fault.
What to look for in the next quote you read
Skip past the panel and inverter specifications for a moment and go to the parts nobody photographs.
Does it state that the roof and its covering were assessed, and by whom? Does it name how many spare ways the DB has, and what happens if that changes once the cover comes off? Does it fix the inverter position and describe the cable route? Does it list roof structure, waterproofing and DB upgrade work as either included or excluded, in plain words rather than a footnote? Does it say who lodges the SSEG application, who issues the CoC, and who pays if the board is worse than expected?
If two or three of those answers are missing, you are not holding a quote. You are holding a price for the hardware with the site left as an open question. The site always answers on installation day, when you have the least room to negotiate and the most to lose.
