Check your inverter model before 30 September

There is a date on a spreadsheet that almost nobody outside the trade has looked at, and it lands this week. On 30 September, Orion stops accepting solar connection applications that use an inverter certified to the old AS/NZS 4777.2:2015 standard. Ten brands have models on that list, and they are not obscure ones: Fronius, SolarEdge, Sungrow, GoodWe and Growatt are all there. If you are a Cantabrian holding a solar quote you have been mulling over since winter, the inverter on it is worth ten seconds of your attention before Wednesday.

What actually changes

Every grid-connected inverter in New Zealand has to meet AS/NZS 4777.2, the joint Australian and New Zealand standard that governs how an inverter behaves on the network: how it handles voltage, when it disconnects, how it rides through a disturbance. The 2020 version replaced the 2015 one, and the transition has been slow, because thousands of perfectly good inverters were certified under the older rules.

Orion's approved inverter list, updated in March, spells out the end of that runway in three lines. Inverters complying with the 2015 standard are being phased out. A transition period runs six months from 1 April 2026. And in Orion's own words, "applications with inverters certified to AS/NZS 4777.2:2015 will only be accepted up to 30 September 2026".

That is the whole change. After Wednesday, if you lodge a connection application in Canterbury with a 2015-certified inverter on it, the network can decline it.

The ten brands affected

This is the part that surprised us. The phase-out section is not a clearance rack of no-name gear. It contains ten brands, and several of them are the names you see most often on New Zealand quotes.

APS, Bluesun, Deye, FIMER, Fronius, GoodWe, Growatt, SolarEdge, Sungrow and Victron all have models listed under the 2015 standard. In most cases these are older model lines that the manufacturer has already superseded, sitting alongside that same brand's current models in the compliant section higher up the document. Fronius, SolarEdge, Sungrow and GoodWe all appear in both places.

So the brand on your quote tells you nothing. The model number tells you everything.

This is not a recall

Worth being plain, because a deadline attached to a safety standard reads alarming and this one is not.

Orion's wording is about applications. It is a rule for connecting new systems, not a judgement on systems already installed and running. If you had a 2015-certified inverter commissioned two years ago, nothing about Wednesday changes it, and nothing in that document asks you to do anything.

The standard changed because the grid has changed. There is far more solar on the network than there was in 2015, and the newer rules govern how inverters behave collectively when voltage wanders or the frequency dips. It is housekeeping, on a long timetable, arriving at its last day.

Canterbury, not nationwide

Here is the caveat that matters, and it is a real one: we checked two networks, and they do not say the same thing.

Orion, which covers Christchurch and much of Canterbury, publishes the 30 September cutoff explicitly. Vector, which covers Auckland, publishes an approved inverter list that makes no mention of the 2015 standard or any phase-out date at all. Its list simply carries the models it will connect.

New Zealand has 29 distribution networks and each one sets its own connection rules. Some will have published a date, some will have quietly stopped listing older models, some will not have moved yet. If you are outside Canterbury, the honest answer is that you need to look at your own lines company's list rather than assume this date applies to you.

If your quote is unsigned

If you are in Canterbury and you have a solar quote you have not signed:

• Find the inverter model number on the quote. Not the brand, the full model string, including any suffix.
• Search for that exact string on Orion's compliant inverter list.
• If it appears in the 2015 section, ask your installer two questions: can the application be lodged before 30 September, and what is the current-standard equivalent.
• If it appears in the main list with a 2020 or 2020+A1 note, there is nothing to do.

A good installer will already know, because this deadline has been sitting in their inbox since April. If your installer does not know, that in itself is worth noting.

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Sources

Lines company inverter lists

• Orion: AS 4777 Compliant Inverters, March 2026 (read 27 September 2026). The transition wording and the ten-brand phase-out section are both in this document.
• Vector: approved inverter list (read 27 September 2026). No reference to the 2015 standard or a phase-out date.

Standard

• AS/NZS 4777.2:2020, Standards New Zealand (read 27 September 2026)

Register Orion now aligns with

• Clean Energy Council: approved inverters (read 27 September 2026)