The Solar Scam Checklist: How to Avoid Shady Installers

The single most reliable way to avoid getting burned on solar in New Zealand is to check one thing before you sign anything: that the person doing the electrical work holds a current registration with the Electrical Workers Registration Board (EWRB). You can confirm any electrician or electrical inspector for free in about 60 seconds on the EWRB public register at ewrb.govt.nz. No registration, no deal. Beyond that, the warning signs are remarkably consistent: high-pressure sales tactics, a quote that promises your bill will vanish, a "today only" discount, and door-knockers who want a signature before they leave. Genuine installers do none of these things. Below is exactly what to check, what to ask, and how to spot the games before they cost you ten grand.

Why this matters more in solar than almost anywhere else

A solar system is a five-figure purchase that sits on your roof for 25 years. Get it wrong and you are not returning a faulty toaster; you are living with underperforming panels, a voided warranty, or an installer who has dissolved the company and started a new one under a different name.

New Zealand has no solar-specific licensing regime. There is no government "solar installer" certificate you can demand to see. That gap is exactly where the dodgy operators live. The work itself is regulated (the electrical side must be done by EWRB-registered people, and the rooftop work must meet the Building Code), but the sales and design layer sitting on top is wide open.

So your protection is not a single licence. It is a short list of checks you run yourself, and a healthy suspicion of anyone trying to rush you past them.

The red flags that should end the conversation

1. The door-knocker

Reputable solar companies in Aotearoa do not generally cold-knock suburban streets at 6pm trying to sign you up on the spot. The economics of a good install do not support an army of commission-only doorsteppers. When someone appears uninvited with a tablet and a "we're doing a few homes in your area" pitch, treat it as a sales operation first and an engineering firm a distant second.

Under the Fair Trading Act 1986, uninvited direct sales agreements over $100 must give you a written agreement and a five working day cancellation right. If a door-to-door seller does not tell you about that cooling-off period, that is itself a breach the Commerce Commission takes seriously. A genuine operator will mention it without being asked.

2. High-pressure timing and the "today only" discount

The phantom discount is the oldest trick in the book. "Normally this system is $18,000 but if you sign tonight I can do $11,000." That is not a discount; that is a $7,000 lie about the starting price. Solar pricing in New Zealand is fairly transparent now. A fully installed 5kW system typically runs around $9,000 to $13,000 in 2025 (roughly $1.70 to $2.20 per watt), broadly consistent with installer pricing and the cost trends EECA tracks. A "special price" that lands inside that band is just the normal price wearing a costume.

Any real quote should be valid for at least a couple of weeks. Equipment pricing does not swing wildly day to day. If the deal evaporates the moment you say "I'd like to think about it," it was never a good deal.

3. The ROI fantasy

This is the one that catches careful people, because it is dressed up in maths. Watch for:

• Payback claims under about 6 years for a grid-tied system with a battery. Honest payback for a well-sized NZ system is usually in the 7 to 12 year range, and longer once you add a battery, depending on your usage and region. Anything dramatically shorter is built on optimistic assumptions.
• Promises that your power bill will disappear entirely. A grid-tied home in New Zealand keeps a connection and keeps paying daily fixed charges. Solar reduces your bill, sometimes dramatically; it does not zero it. Anyone who says otherwise is either confused or lying.
• Savings figures with no buy-back rate stated. The rate your retailer pays for exported power is the lever the whole ROI swings on, and it varies wildly. We break down how those numbers actually stack up, and why they matter so much, when you run real figures through our solar cost and ROI calculator.

Here is the insight the slick salespeople never volunteer: their savings figure almost always assumes a self-consumption rate they have not checked against your life. If you are out at work all day and the dog is the only one home, most of your generation gets exported at a low buy-back rate (often 7 to 17 cents per kWh depending on retailer) rather than offsetting power you would have bought at 30-plus cents. Two identical houses on the same street can have wildly different paybacks purely because of who is home at 1pm. A quote that does not ask about your daytime habits cannot honestly predict your savings.

4. The "free" system or the suspiciously easy finance

There is no free solar in New Zealand. "Free" systems are finance arrangements where the interest is buried in an inflated system price. Solar finance can be perfectly sensible, but you want to see the cash price and the financed price side by side. If the company refuses to quote a cash price, walk.

5. Vague, single-line quotes

A quote that just says "8kW solar system, fully installed, $14,000" tells you almost nothing. A proper quote names the panel make and model and wattage, the inverter make and model, the number of panels, the battery model and usable capacity if included, the warranty terms for each component and the workmanship, and who is responsible for the council and lines company paperwork. If you cannot tell from the quote exactly what is going on your roof, you cannot compare it to anything.

How to check electrical registration (the 60-second job)

This is the check that separates a real installer from a chancer, and almost nobody does it. Here is how.

1. Ask the company which registered electrician will carry out and certify the connection, and get their name.
2. Go to the Electrical Workers Registration Board public register at ewrb.govt.nz and search that name.
3. Confirm they hold a current practising licence, not just a registration. Registration without a current licence means they are not legally allowed to do the work right now.
4. Check the class of registration. The grid connection of a solar system needs an appropriately registered electrician; ask them to confirm their class covers the work.

Every solar install that connects to the grid must be inspected and certified, and you are entitled to receive a Certificate of Compliance (CoC) and, for the connection, an Electrical Safety Certificate (ESC). Keep these. They are your proof the work was done legally, and you will want them if you ever sell the house or make a warranty claim. A company that gets cagey about who is signing the certificate is telling you something important.

One more layer: ask whether the installer is a member of the Sustainable Energy Association of New Zealand (SEANZ). Membership is not compulsory and is not a guarantee on its own, but SEANZ members sign up to a code of practice, and it is a reasonable positive signal alongside your other checks.

The company behind the quote: a quick due-diligence pass

The panels might last 25 years. Will the company? A surprising number of warranty claims fail not because the product is bad but because the installer no longer exists. Run these checks before you sign:

• Companies Register (companies.govt.nz). Search the company name. Check how long it has been registered and who the directors are. A company incorporated three months ago offering 25-year workmanship warranties is a mismatch worth questioning.
• Phoenix patterns. If the directors have a trail of recently closed companies in the same trade, that is a classic "phoenix" warning sign: fold the old entity (and its warranty obligations), rise again under a new name.
• A real physical address and landline, not just a mobile and a Gmail account.
• Genuine local reviews, ideally with photos and specifics, not a wall of five-star one-liners posted in the same week.
• References you can actually ring. Ask for two recent local installs and call them.

We do exactly this kind of digging before we recommend anyone, and we have written up the full method we use in our 13-step installer vetting process if you want to run the same checks yourself.

The warranty trap nobody warns you about

Here is a genuinely sneaky one. Many premium panels come with a 25-year product warranty, but only if installed by a manufacturer-accredited installer and registered with the manufacturer within a set window after install. If your installer is not accredited, or simply does not bother to register your system, you can be left with a much shorter default warranty, and you would never know until you tried to claim.

So the question to ask is not just "what's the warranty?" but "are you accredited to install this brand, and will you register my system with the manufacturer so the full product warranty applies?" Get the answer in writing. This single question quietly weeds out a lot of operators.

Watch too for the gap between the product warranty (the panel itself), the performance warranty (how much output is guaranteed over time), and the workmanship warranty (the installer's own labour). They are three different things with three different lengths, and a vague quote blurs them together on purpose.

A worked example: spotting the trap in real numbers

Picture a 1970s brick-and-tile place in Papakura. A door-knocker quotes a 10kW system with a battery for "$24,000, normally $31,000, but only if you sign tonight." He says it will "wipe out" the family's $320 monthly winter power bill and pay for itself in five years.

Run it through the checks:

• The discount is theatre. 10kW with a decent battery sits in a believable range, so the "$31,000 normally" is an invented anchor.
• "Wipe out the bill" is false. The home stays grid-connected and keeps paying Vector's fixed daily lines charge through their retailer, every day, forever. Winter generation in South Auckland is a fraction of summer.
• The five-year payback does not survive contact with the buy-back rate. If the family is out all day, much of that 10kW floods the grid at a modest export rate rather than offsetting expensive imported power. Realistically the payback is closer to a decade once you account for that and the battery cost.
• The pressure is the tell. A real installer would want a site visit, a look at the switchboard, a read of the family's actual usage pattern, and a chat with Vector about export limits before quoting anything firm.

None of this means 10kW and a battery is wrong for that house. It might be a great fit. It means the seller was wrong, and the maths needs doing properly with honest inputs.

When solar genuinely is not worth it (the honest part)

A trustworthy guide tells you when to walk away from the whole idea, not just from the bad sellers. Solar may not pencil out if:

• You rent, or expect to move within a few years. The payback window is long, and you cannot take the panels with you easily.
• Your roof is heavily shaded by neighbours' trees, a two-storey neighbour, or your own chimney for much of the day. The West Coast's genuine cloud cover is a separate, real consideration too.
• Nobody is home during the day and you are not willing to shift loads (dishwasher, washing, hot water, EV charging) into daylight hours, and a battery does not pencil out for you.
• Your power use is already very low. If your bill is modest, the savings shrink and the payback stretches out.

An installer who acknowledges these realities is one you can trust. An installer who insists solar is brilliant for absolutely everyone is selling, not advising.

What to do before you sign: your short checklist

• Get at least three quotes on the same basis (same approximate system size) so you are comparing like for like.
• Verify the electrician on the EWRB register and confirm a current practising licence.
• Check the company on the Companies Register for age and director history.
• Demand an itemised quote: panel and inverter make/model, panel count, battery capacity, every warranty length, and who handles council and lines paperwork.
• Ask the brand-accreditation and warranty-registration question and get the answer in writing.
• Confirm you will receive the Certificate of Compliance and Electrical Safety Certificate.
• Never sign on the first visit. A good price will still be there next week.
• Know your cooling-off rights under the Fair Trading Act if it was an uninvited sale.

One more thing worth guarding: your personal information. Some lead-generation outfits exist mainly to harvest and on-sell your details to whoever pays most. We take the opposite view, and you can read exactly how we handle data under the Privacy Act 2020 and how the emerging Consumer Data Right for energy is starting to put you back in control of your own usage information.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a licence specifically for solar installers in New Zealand?

No. There is no dedicated solar-installer licence. The electrical connection work must be done and certified by someone registered with the Electrical Workers Registration Board, and rooftop work must meet the Building Code, but the sales and design layer is unregulated. That is precisely why your own checks matter so much.

How do I check if an electrician is registered?

Search their name on the Electrical Workers Registration Board public register at ewrb.govt.nz. Confirm they hold a current practising licence (not just registration) and that their class of registration covers the work. It takes about a minute and it is free.

What is a realistic payback period for solar in New Zealand?

For a well-sized grid-tied system without a battery, somewhere in the range of 7 to 12 years is typical, depending heavily on how much power you use during daylight, your buy-back rate, and your region. Adding a battery generally lengthens payback. Anyone quoting under about six years is leaning on optimistic assumptions.

Are door-to-door solar salespeople a scam?

Not automatically, but treat them with extra caution. Reputable installers rarely cold-knock. Under the Fair Trading Act, uninvited sales over $100 must come with a written agreement and a five working day cooling-off period; if they do not mention that, that alone is a breach worth reporting to the Commerce Commission.

Can solar really get rid of my power bill completely?

No. A grid-connected home keeps its connection and keeps paying daily fixed charges to its retailer and lines company. Solar can substantially reduce your bill, especially if you use power during the day, but it does not zero it. Any seller promising a bill of nothing is not being straight with you.

What documents should I receive after installation?

You should get a Certificate of Compliance for the work and an Electrical Safety Certificate for the connection, plus your warranty documentation and ideally confirmation your system has been registered with the panel manufacturer. Keep all of it; you will want it for any warranty claim or when you sell the house.

How can I tell if the warranty is genuine?

Ask whether the installer is accredited to fit that particular brand and whether they will register your system with the manufacturer so the full product warranty applies. Get it in writing. Also confirm the three separate warranties (product, performance, and workmanship) and their lengths, since a vague quote blurs them together.

Why do two similar houses get such different solar savings?

Mostly because of self-consumption. Power you use as you generate it offsets electricity you would have bought at 30-plus cents per kWh, while exported power earns only your retailer's buy-back rate. A household that is home and using power during the day captures far more value than an identical house left empty until evening.

The Bottom Line

Avoiding a shady solar deal is not about being an expert. It is about refusing to be rushed and running a handful of simple checks: verify the electrician on the EWRB register, look up the company on the Companies Register, demand an itemised quote, and ignore anyone whose price expires at midnight. The good operators welcome these questions, because the questions make them look good.

If you want to understand the standard we hold installers to before we put their name in front of anyone, have a read of our promise to New Zealand homeowners. And when you are ready to compare real, honest numbers, we are happy to help you line up quotes from people who do the job properly.