How to choose a solar installer in Yorkshire

How to choose a solar installer comes down to five checks, and none of them is the price. Check the MCS certificate is live and covers solar PV. Ask who is physically on your roof and who answers the phone in three years. Read the quote for what has been left out. Ask which grid application they are making. And look at what happens when something goes wrong. The systems we fit and what they cost are on the solar panels page.

This is the list I would work through if I were buying rather than selling, and some of it is uncomfortable for my own trade.

Timing matters at the moment as well. The government consultation on reforming consumer protection for home upgrades closed on 10 September 2026, and its proposals would move a lot of what TrustMark and MCS do today into a single service with a public register of approved installers (gov.uk). Nothing has changed yet. It is a reason to check the paperwork rather than assume somebody else has.

How to choose a solar installer: the five checks that matter

Work through these in order and most of the field sorts itself out.

First, MCS. Second, who is on the roof. Third, what the quote leaves out. Fourth, the grid application. Fifth, what the aftercare actually is. Price comes last, once you are comparing the same job.

The reason price comes last is simple. Two quotes for the same house are almost never the same job. One of them has scaffold on three elevations and a new consumer unit in it, and the other does not.

Check the MCS certificate, not the logo

MCS certification is what makes you eligible for export payments under the Smart Export Guarantee, and for the zero rate of VAT on the install. Without it you are fitting an expensive hobby.

Search the MCS installer directory for the company name and read the entry. You are checking three things: that it is current, that it lists solar PV rather than only heat pumps or only battery storage, and that the certificate number on the quote matches. Ours is NAP-75287, and it is on the accreditations page with the rest.

People search for mcs certified installers near me and take the first paid advert. The directory is free and takes a minute.

Then check whether they are in a consumer code. RECC and HIES are the two. That membership is what gives you deposit protection and a route to arbitration if the company stops answering. If a firm is MCS certified but in no code, ask why.

Ask who is answerable for the job

This is the question that separates companies.

What matters is which company puts its name to the work: who signs the MCS certificate, who commissions the system and sets the inverter up, and who picks up the phone afterwards. A sales agent who hands you to a call centre and vanishes is a different animal from an installer whose name is on the certificate and whose number still rings in three years.

So ask it directly. Whose name is on the MCS certificate. Who commissions it and sets the inverter up. Who I ring in three years if the app stops reporting. If those are three different companies, you are the one holding the risk.

Read the quote for what is missing

Four items, and they are worth thousands between them. If you would rather we went through it with you, our quote checker takes a PDF or a photo of the quote.

Scaffold. How many elevations, for how long, and is it in the price. A terrace with a rear extension often needs more than one lift.

The consumer unit. Older boards need a new way or a full replacement to take the solar supply. If your board is a 1990s unit with rewireable fuses, assume it is changing and ask for that in writing.

Bird protection. A roof with gulls or pigeons will need mesh around the array eventually. It is far cheaper fitted at the same time as the panels than as a return visit with scaffold.

The DNO application. Somebody has to notify the network operator that owns the wires in your street. It should be the installer, and it should be named in the quote.

The G99 question that catches people out

Ask every quoting company one question: are you applying under G98 or G99, and when.

G98 is a connect-and-notify route for small systems, broadly up to 16 A per phase, which is about 3.68 kW on a normal single phase supply. You fit it, then tell the DNO. Anything larger needs a G99 application, which goes in before the installation and can take weeks to come back.

This is where a bad quote hides. A ten or twelve panel system with a deliberately undersized inverter will squeeze under the G98 limit, which means no application, no waiting and a faster sale. It also means your array is clipped on every bright day for the next twenty five years.

We have quoted against that more than once. The customer's words, near enough, were that they had been filled up with bull and the twelve-panel G98 quote made them uncomfortable. They were right to be.

If the system on your quote is over about 3.68 kW and nobody has mentioned G99, that is the conversation to have.

Questions to ask a solar installer, word for word

Print this solar installer checklist and ask the questions on the doorstep.

• What is your MCS number, and which technologies does it cover?
• Which consumer code are you in, and is my deposit protected?
• Is scaffold in this price, and for how many elevations?
• Does the price include a consumer unit upgrade if mine needs one?
• Are you applying under G98 or G99, and has it gone in?
• What inverter is it, and is it battery ready if I add storage later?
• What is the workmanship warranty, and who honours it if you stop trading?
• Who commissions the system and registers the MCS certificate?
• What happens if the generation is well below what you have forecast?

A company that answers all nine without flinching is a company that has done this before.

Warning signs I would walk away from

A discount that expires at the end of the visit. Nobody prices a roof properly and then knocks a third off to get a signature that evening.

A generation figure with no assumptions behind it. Ask which irradiance data, which orientation and which shading factor. In South Yorkshire a well-placed roof gives roughly 950 to 1,000 kWh a year per kWp fitted, so a forecast well above that needs explaining.

A survey done from a satellite photo. Somebody has to look at the tiles, the rafters and the loft. Solar panel maintenance covers what happens when they did not.

And a quote that does not say which panel and which inverter by model number. If it says "premium tier one panels", you cannot compare it with anything, which is the point.

Running the checks on us

Put our quote against the nine questions above, the same way you would any other. Every item in the quote section is on it in writing: the scaffold, the panel and inverter by model number, the certificates and what happens afterwards.

Are solar panels worth it covers whether to buy at all, and solar panel cost in Yorkshire covers the money. When you want our figure for your roof, Get a quote with your postcode, or ring 01709 278248.