Home Solar Installer

A home solar installer should start with your bill, not a price list

Two houses on the same street can need very different solar systems. One has a pool pump and air conditioning running through the afternoon; the other is empty until six. A home solar installer who quotes from a package table is guessing. We measure the house, read the bills and size the system to the way you live. And on systems we design for it, your bill gets to $0 or we cover it.

Deionno Electrical & Solar is an electrical contractor with its own installation crews; the solar and electrical work is never handed to a subcontractor. We’ve been in business ten years, and our licensed electricians have installed more than 4,000 solar and battery systems, in Adelaide first and now on the Sunshine Coast. Every home system carries a 10-year workmanship warranty, product warranties of up to 25 years, and a written fix-it commitment in the contract.

What a home solar installer does, and who is allowed to do it

Every rooftop solar system in Australia has to be installed and signed off by a licensed electrician, and the federal rebate is only paid when an accredited installer does the job. Some companies employ those electricians. Others sell the system and hand the work to whoever is available that week. The difference shows up years later, when a connector fails and nobody knows who put it there.

We hold SA electrical licence 287733 and QLD electrical contractor licence 1512582, and our own electricians do the assessment, the design, the installation and the sign-off. The person who climbs the ladder works for us.

Home solar designed from your bills, not a package

We don’t sell fixed-price packages. A home solar design starts with three things: a year of bills, which tell us how much power you use and when; the roof, which tells us how many panels fit and which way they face; and the switchboard and supply, which set the inverter size and whether a battery or backup is straightforward. From those we size the array, choose the inverter and work out the saving, in writing.

The two questions we get asked most, what size and what price, have the same answer: it depends on how you use power. A 6.6 kW system was the standard for years because it matched a 5 kW inverter and the export rules. Today most homes we design are bigger, because feed-in tariffs are low and the saving is in the power you use yourself. A 10 kW system makes around 40 kWh a day averaged over the year in Adelaide or on the Sunshine Coast, enough to run most family homes with the air conditioning on and charge a battery or a car with what’s left.

What home solar costs

The price of a home system moves with four things: the size of the array, the inverter (string, hybrid or micro), the roof (tile, Colorbond or flat, single or two storey, how many faces) and the switchboard. The federal rebate comes off the top. Because every system is designed for the house, we publish how the price is built rather than a from-price that only applies to the easiest roof.

What we can say before the visit: the on-site assessment and the written proposal are free, there is no travel charge anywhere in our service area, the rebate is already deducted on the quote, and finance is available if you’d rather pay the system off from the saving. For a figure on the rebate itself, our solar rebate calculator works it out from your postcode and system size.

Solar rebates, feed-in tariffs and export limits in SA and Queensland

South Australia

The federal rebate, paid through the Small-scale Renewable Energy Scheme as STCs, applies to every eligible home system and steps down each January until it ends in 2030. SA Power Networks allows a 10 kW inverter on a single-phase supply with a standard 5 kW export limit, and more on three-phase, which is why we check the supply at the assessment. Feed-in tariffs in SA now sit in the single digits of cents, and some plans charge for exporting in the middle of the day, so the design aims at using your power at home. New systems also have to meet the state’s Smarter Homes requirements; we lodge that paperwork with the network as part of the job.

Queensland

The same federal rebate applies on the Sunshine Coast. Energex sets the connection rules in South East Queensland, with a 5 kW export limit the common case on single-phase and dynamic connections that allow more where the network can take it. We handle the Energex application before install day. Feed-in tariffs here are also low, so the thinking is the same as in SA: size for self-use, and plan for a battery even if it comes later.

Which roofs and homes suit solar panels

Nearly every home solar panel installation we do lands on one of three roof types; the rest comes down to shade, storeys and the switchboard.

• Roof type. Tile, Colorbond and Klip-Lok all work; each needs its own mounting. Tiles get flashed so the roof doesn’t leak; Klip-Lok takes clamps with no holes at all; corrugated Colorbond takes feet screwed into the battens and sealed.
• Orientation and shade. North is best, but east and west faces work well for morning and evening use. Where a chimney or a tree shades part of the roof, optimisers or micro-inverters let the rest of the array carry on.
• Single or two storey. Two-storey homes take longer and sometimes need a scissor lift, which goes into the price. The job still gets done.
• Switchboard. Older boards may need a dedicated breaker or a safety switch before solar can be connected. We tell you at the assessment and price it in.
• No roof space? We also build ground-mounted arrays on rural and larger blocks.

The solar panels, inverters and batteries we install

We are a certified installer for Sungrow, Sigenergy and Tesla Powerwall, which means those makers have trained and checked our crews on their inverters and batteries. Panels come from the makers listed on our brands page, all with Australian warranty support. If you are thinking about a battery, now or later, we design the inverter and switchboard so adding one is a straightforward job, and we’ll tell you straight whether it pays today.

Home solar installation from quote to switch-on

Most home systems go from the assessment to a working system in one to two months, most of it waiting on the network. Install day itself is usually one day for a straightforward home, and up to three for a larger system with a battery or switchboard work. The crew arrives in the morning, mounts the rails and panels, fits the inverter, runs the cable and does the switchboard work, tests everything, and walks you through the monitoring app before they leave. The meter change and the grid connection follow, and then the system is live.

Solar warranties and the $0 bill guarantee

Three warranties cover a home system: the panels’ product and performance warranties, up to 25 years; the inverter maker’s warranty; and our 10-year workmanship warranty on the installation, with a written commitment in the contract that we come back and fix it. And on systems we design for it, your bill gets to $0 or we cover it: if the bill doesn’t reach $0, we cover it for the following twelve months.

How to compare home solar quotes

Put the quotes side by side and check these before the price.

1. Is the system size in kW, with the panel make, model and count? A cheap quote is often a smaller system.
2. Which inverter, and is it a hybrid? A battery later costs more if the inverter can’t take one.
3. Did anyone visit the house, or was the quote done from a satellite photo?
4. Who installs it? Employees, or a subcontractor named on the day?
5. Is the switchboard work included, or an extra on install day?
6. What is the workmanship warranty, separate from the product warranties, and who honours it?
7. Is the rebate already deducted, and who lodges the paperwork?

If two quotes are a long way apart, they’re usually not for the same system. Bring them to the assessment and we’ll read them with you.

Home solar installers in Adelaide and on the Sunshine Coast

From the Salisbury Plain base our Adelaide electricians cover the metro area, the Hills, the Fleurieu, the Barossa and the Yorke Peninsula. From Corbould Park the Sunshine Coast crews cover Caloundra to Noosa, the hinterland, Gympie and north Brisbane. There is no travel charge and no cost for a quote anywhere in those areas. Find your suburb on the Adelaide or Sunshine Coast solar installer pages.