How Do You Choose a Solar Installer in New Jersey? Ten Questions to Ask

A residential solar array is a piece of equipment you will own for decades, bolted through your roof, wired into your electrical service, and dependent on somebody honouring a warranty long after the sale. Choosing who installs it is a bigger decision than choosing which panels go on it.

The difficulty is that solar sales has a structural problem: it is often easier to build a company that sells installations than one that performs them. A sales organisation can be assembled quickly, generates revenue immediately, and subcontracts the difficult part. When something goes wrong in year seven, the entity that sold you the system may no longer exist in any form you can call.

These ten questions are designed to find out who you are actually dealing with.

1. Who physically installs the system?

Ask directly whether the crew on your roof will be employees of the company you are signing with. Subcontracting is common and not automatically bad, but it changes accountability. When the salesperson, the installer, and the warranty administrator are three separate businesses, a defect years later turns into a dispute about whose problem it is — a dispute you are in the middle of.

Follow up with: who do I call in year six if a panel stops producing? A company that can name the answer without checking is a company that has answered it before.

2. Are you licensed and insured, and can I verify it myself?

Solar installation involves electrical work, which in New Jersey requires a licensed electrical contractor, and it involves home improvement work, which requires registration. Ask for the numbers and check them yourself with the issuing bodies. A contractor who is comfortable with that is a contractor who expects it.

Insurance matters just as much and is asked about less. You want current general liability and workers compensation coverage. If an uninsured worker is injured on your roof, that can become your exposure.

3. What production estimate are you using, and how did you get it?

Every payback figure you are shown rests on an estimate of how much electricity the system will actually generate. That estimate depends on your roof's orientation and pitch, on shading through the year, and on the specific equipment proposed.

Ask how shading was assessed. An estimate produced from aerial imagery alone will not know about the neighbour's oak or the chimney that shades the western plane after two in the afternoon. Ask whether the estimate is a modelled figure and whether the contract contains any production guarantee. Very often there is none, which is fine as long as you know it.

4. What exactly is included in this price?

Quotes that differ substantially usually differ because they describe different jobs. Get each one to state:

• System size and the exact panel and inverter models.
• Racking and attachment method.
• Any electrical service panel upgrade — a common and significant cost that some quotes exclude and later add.
• Permits, inspections, and utility interconnection paperwork.
• Any roof work, repair, or reinforcement.
• Monitoring hardware and whether the monitoring service carries an ongoing fee.

Compare like for like. A quote that is lower because it excludes a panel upgrade you will certainly need is not lower.

5. What are the warranties, and who honours each one?

There are at least three, from different parties. The panel manufacturer warrants the modules. The inverter manufacturer warrants the inverter, usually for a shorter period. The installer warrants their own workmanship, including the roof penetrations.

The workmanship warranty is the one that varies most between contractors and the one most likely to matter, because leaks and mounting failures are installation problems rather than equipment problems. Ask its length in writing, and ask specifically whether it covers roof penetrations.

6. How do you handle the roof?

Ask who assessed the roof's condition, whether they physically went onto it and into the attic, and how penetrations are flashed. You want to hear about flashing integrated into the shingle courses. If the answer is about sealant, keep looking.

Then ask the question that reveals the most: what do you recommend if the roof has under ten years left? A contractor who says the roof should be replaced first — knowing that answer may delay or lose the sale — is telling you something valuable about how they will handle every other trade-off.

7. Who handles permits, inspections, and interconnection?

A solar installation in New Jersey requires municipal permits, electrical inspection, and a utility interconnection agreement before the system can legally operate. The paperwork is routine for people who do it constantly and bewildering for people who do not.

Confirm the contractor handles all of it, and ask what their typical timeline looks like from contract to permission to operate. Ask what happens if the utility is slow. You are buying a project, not a box of parts.

8. How does the SuSI registration work, and who files it?

New Jersey's production incentive requires registration, and the registration has to be done correctly for the payments to flow. Ask who files it, when, and what confirmation you will receive.

Then ask the question that follows from it: who receives the payments? On a system you own, they should come to you. If you are being offered a lease or power purchase agreement, they normally go to the system owner, and that belongs in the comparison rather than in a footnote.

9. What happens if I need the panels removed later?

Roofs get replaced, houses get sold, additions get built. Ask what removal and reinstallation would cost and whether it can be quoted at all. Ask whether the workmanship warranty survives a removal by another contractor, because on many agreements it does not.

The answers are less important than the reaction. A contractor who has thought about the twenty-year life of the installation answers easily. One who has only thought about the sale does not.

10. Can I speak to customers from three or more years ago?

Recent references tell you the crew was tidy and finished on time. They tell you nothing about warranty service, because nothing has needed servicing yet.

Older references are the useful ones. Ask whether anything went wrong, how long it took to get someone out, and whether the company was still easy to reach. A contractor with a long local history will have those customers. A sales organisation that entered the market recently will not, and the inability to produce them is itself an answer.

What should you do with the answers?

Collect three quotes, normalise the scope so they describe the same job, and then weight the answers to questions one, five, six, and ten most heavily. Those four are about whether the work will be done properly and whether anyone will stand behind it.

Price matters, and nobody should pretend otherwise. But the cheapest quote on a system that will be on your roof for twenty-five years is a false economy if the workmanship warranty is thin, the crew is a rotating subcontractor, and the company selling it has been trading for eighteen months. The panels are commodities. The installation is not.