Buying a house with solar panels: transferring the warranties

Solar equipment warranties are attached to the equipment and the installation address, not to the person who paid for it, so a system usually keeps whatever cover it has when the house changes hands. What you have to get from the seller is the paperwork: install date, invoices, serial numbers, brand names, and the monitoring account logins. Without those, a live warranty is very hard to actually use.

Get them before settlement. After settlement, the seller has moved and stopped answering.

Ask for this before you exchange

Put it on the same list as the compliance certificates. It is a five minute request for the seller and it is worth years of cover to you.

• The installation invoice, showing the date and the installing company
• The names and model numbers of the panels, the inverter, and the battery if there is one
• Serial numbers for each, or photographs of the stickers
• Any warranty certificates that came with the equipment
• Logins for the monitoring portal, or confirmation of which portal it is
• The installing company's name, and whether they are still trading
• Any extended warranty or labour warranty the seller bought, with its paperwork
• The delivery date or shipment date if they have it, which matters more than you would think

That last one is the one nobody has. Ask anyway.

Which warranties survive a sale

Three warranties exist on a solar system and they behave differently when the house is sold.

The equipment warranties are the ones with real length left in them, and they are held by companies overseas that have never heard of either you or the seller.

The workmanship warranty is the fragile one. It is a contract between the installer and the person who bought the system. Some installers transfer it, some transfer it for a fee, and some do not transfer it at all. Ask, in writing, before you assume.

What we are not going to tell you

Here is a thing this site will say plainly rather than fudging.

We publish warranty terms checked against each manufacturer's own document, with the date the document was read, and you can see all of them on the brand pages. What we do not currently hold, brand by brand, is each manufacturer's transfer clause. Most warranty documents contain one. Some say the warranty transfers automatically with the property. Some require written notice within a period. Some restrict transfer to the original installation address, which is fine for a house sale and matters if equipment is moved.

We are not going to summarise clauses we have not read into a table for you. What we will do is tell you the question to ask and make it easy to ask it: the warranty transfer letter tool generates the notice for the brand you have, so you can put your name on the record and get the manufacturer's answer in writing.

Send it. A one page letter now is worth a lot in year eight.

The conditions that outlive the seller

This is the part specific to solar, and it is the reason a house sale is a dangerous moment for a warranty.

Several brands hold their full term only while something stays true. Those conditions do not pause for a change of ownership, and the new owner is usually never told about them.

Tesla Powerwall. The 10 year term depends on the unit staying connected to the internet. If the connection drops and is not restored within 45 days of Tesla's written request, cover ends at 48 months instead of 10 years. Moving house is exactly when a battery goes offline, because the seller's wifi leaves with them. Reconnect the Powerwall to your network on day one, not eventually. See the Tesla warranty page.

GoodWe. The 10 year inverter term applies only while the inverter is connected to the SEMS portal and uploading generation data, and on a hybrid with a Lynx battery, only if both serials are registered. Miss either and the term is five years, and nobody notifies you. Same problem: the wifi changes when the house changes. See the GoodWe warranty page.

REC. ProTrust, the cover on the sales brochure, exists only if an REC Certified Solar Professional installed the system and registered the installation. That either happened years ago or it did not, and you cannot fix it retroactively. Worth checking what the system actually has rather than what the brochure says. See the REC warranty page.

So the first thing to do after you get the keys is not paperwork. It is putting the inverter and the battery back on your wifi.

The system is older than the install date suggests

The second unpleasant surprise. For several brands, the warranty term does not start on the installation date.

• SolarEdge starts at the earlier of installation or four months from shipment. The standard term is 12 years, and paid extensions to 20 or 25 years had to be bought within 24 months of shipment, so if the seller did not buy one, that door is closed.
• Fronius starts at delivery ex works, unless the unit was registered in Solar.web within 30 months of delivery, in which case cover starts at commissioning. Whether the seller's installer did that determines what you have.
• BYD has no registration at all, and without written proof of delivery, the 10 years runs from six months after the production date rather than from delivery plus 30 days. That delivery note is a piece of paper the seller may still have and will certainly throw away when they move.
• Jinko starts at delivery or 180 days after manufacture, whichever is earlier.
• Trina starts at installation or three months after delivery, whichever comes first.

Which means a system described as "installed in 2020, ten year warranty" might have less than five years left. The warranty deadline calculator will work out the real expiry from whatever dates you can get hold of.

Also note the pattern in that list. Several brands need no registration at all, so there is often nothing to transfer in the registration sense. The value is entirely in the documents.

Nobody pays the labour

Worth knowing before you buy, because it changes what an ageing system is worth to you.

Across the brands in our catalogue, almost all carry zero labour cover. The manufacturer replaces the failed part and somebody has to be paid to fit it. Two exceptions exist and both are worth naming: Enphase, in the United States, reimburses $200 per truck roll plus $25 per replaced microinverter, and REC's Alpha Pure-R line carries 20 years of labour cover.

Everything else means a free part and your electrician. If the house has a ten year old inverter, price that in.

If the installing company has closed

Common in solar, and it changes the picture rather than ending it.

The equipment warranties survive, because they are held by manufacturers. The workmanship warranty dies with the company, and so does your free route to filing a claim, because manufacturers want a trade diagnosis and installers charge for attending.

You can still claim. You just pay for the visit. See what happens when your solar installer goes out of business.

Your first week checklist

1. Reconnect the inverter and battery to your wifi, and confirm they are reporting.
2. Take over or create the monitoring account, at your address, in your name.
3. Photograph every sticker on every piece of equipment, including the panels if you can see one safely from a ladder.
4. Store the invoice, certificates and photographs somewhere you will find them in ten years. Not just in your email.
5. Send the transfer notice for each brand using the warranty transfer letter tool, and keep the reply.
6. Work out your real expiry dates with the warranty deadline calculator.

If the seller has kept nothing, do items one to four anyway. A serial number and a photograph of a sticker rebuild most of a claim file. What you cannot rebuild is a delivery note, which is why it is worth one email to the seller before they go.

For what a claim actually needs when the day comes, see how to file a solar warranty claim.