How to Get Solar Quotes in NZ (and Compare Them Properly)

How Many Quotes to Get

Two to three.That is EECA's advice and ours. One quote gives you no reference point at all: you cannot tell a fair price from a padded one without something to compare it to.

More than three starts costing you instead of saving you. Each quote means a site assessment, a call or two, and a follow-up sequence, and by quote four you are mostly seeing the same hardware at similar prices with diminishing information in each new one. Three well-chosen quotes from genuinely different installers beats five from whoever answered fastest.

The point of multiple quotes is not to find the cheapest number. It is to see how different installers read your property, because where they disagree is where the real decisions live.

Where to Get Quotes in NZ

• Directly from installers. Pick two or three yourself and approach each one. Most work, but you do the finding, the vetting and the chasing. Our guide to choosing an installer covers what separates a good one, including SEANZ membership and the questions worth asking.
• Through a comparison service. You enter your details once and vetted installers quote against each other. That is what Solar Scout does: we match you with vetted local installers for up to 3 quotes, free. Being upfront about the bias: this is our own service, so weigh that as you would any recommendation a business makes about itself. The vetting standard we apply is published and we decline installers who do not meet it.
• The SEANZ member directory.The industry body's member list is a solid starting pool if you want to run the process yourself, and the ANZ and Kiwibank green loans require a SEANZ member installer anyway.

Whichever route you take, get at least one quote from an installer who was not the first name you found. The first-result installers are not always the best ones, they are the best advertisers.

What to Have Ready

The accuracy of a quote is set by what the installer knows when they write it. Four things turn a guess into a real number:

• A recent power bill. It carries your ICP number and your actual usage, which is what a system should be sized to. Without it, installers size to averages.
• A photo of your switchboard. Old or full switchboards are the most common surprise cost, $1,500 to $4,000+. A photo up front gets it priced instead of discovered.
• Your roof's age. Panels last 25+ years. If the roof will not, replacing it after panels go on costs far more than before. Roofs over 20 years old should be checked first.
• Your daytime habits and plans. Home during the day? EV coming? Battery later? These change the right system size more than anything about your roof does.

A quote written without a site visit or these details is a placeholder, not a price. The gap between placeholder and final price is where install-day surprises come from.

Comparing Quotes Like-for-Like

Quotes arrive in different shapes on purpose. Here is the five-point check that makes them comparable:

For what the totals should land at, a 6.6 kW system runs $14,000 to $15,000 installed and an 8 to 10 kW system $15,000 to $18,000; the full breakdown by size and line item is in our solar panel costs guide. And if two quotes disagree about what size you need, our sizing guide shows how to settle it from your own power bill instead of taking either installer's word.

Red Flags in the Quoting Process

• “This price is only available today.” Almost never true. Good installers hold quotes for 2 to 4 weeks, because a fair price today is a fair price on Thursday.
• No site visit and no questions. A quote written off a satellite photo without asking about your switchboard, usage or roof age is a guess wearing a letterhead.
• A single-line total.“6.6 kW solar system: $14,500” with no breakdown means you cannot see what is missing. Ask for the itemised version and watch what appears.
• Pressure to sign before the other quotes arrive. An installer confident in their price wants you to compare it.
• A price that beats everyone by thousands. Under about $1.40 per watt, the savings are usually coming out of the hardware, the workmanship, or the line items that show up later as extras.

The strongest position in the whole solar buying process is holding two or three comparable quotes at once. Every red flag above works only on people who have one.

Common Questions