A panel that stops delivering, an inverter that faults, and a roof penetration that weeps after rain are not one claim. They sit on different pieces of paper, often with different named companies and different costs left outside the cover. If you treat the quotation total as a single promise that “solar is under warranty,” you still will not know who to call, or whether labour, removal, freight or a site visit is included.
We help buyers understand solar quotation scope and ask the right product and installation support questions before committing. The decision is practical: who should you contact for each kind of failure, and which exclusions matter while you can still change the agreement. Equipment documentation and installation obligations need to be read separately.
Separate Equipment Documents From Installation Obligations
A solar array is a set of products plus a body of work at the property. Product paper names modules, an inverter, and any storage. Installation paper describes mounting, cable routes, penetrations, terminations and the workmanship of that fit. Mixing those files is how a household ends up with a replaced part and an unpaid scaffolding bill.
The useful comparison is solar panel warranty vs installation warranty as two answers, not two slogans. Panel documents typically speak to the module itself: manufacturing defects, output behaviour described in that booklet, and conditions that keep the cover alive. They do not automatically describe whether the person who drilled the roof, landed the rails or landed the DC string will return if the leak is at the penetration. Installation or workmanship cover, if it exists in your pack, speaks to how the system was fitted. It does not automatically replace a failed inverter board.
Inverters sit in the middle of that split. The inverter is equipment with its own booklet, serial and claim route. The labour to diagnose it, isolate it, unbolt it, crate it and refit a replacement is a different cost. Buyers often discover the gap only after a fault code appears, when the equipment issuer asks for the unit and the site still needs a qualified person to remove it.
Ask the seller to identify the company and contact handling each type of claim. The retailer, installer and manufacturer may have different roles, so keep the equipment question and the installation question distinct in the documents you are asked to sign.
A home solar assessment is the right place to start that split for a house, because the system role (daytime offset, selected backup, or independent supply) changes which boxes of equipment you will even have. Warranty reading comes after you know what is being proposed, not before.
Fill In The Responsibility Fields
Before you compare peso totals, treat the warranty pack as a form with blank fields. If a field is empty, the quotation is unfinished for this decision, even if the equipment list looks complete.
Write down the product: panel model and quantity, inverter model, battery model if storage is included, and any other named device that would be expensive to replace. Beside each line, write the warrantor as a legal name, not a brand badge. A brand on the fascia of a unit is not proof of who issues cover, who registers it, or who answers the claim email.
Then write the scope in the warrantor’s own words. Product cover may be limited to repair or replacement of the device. It may exclude consequential damage, roof finishes, interior staining, lost generation, or a temporary supply. Installation cover, if offered, may be limited to defects in workmanship for a stated period, or to specific trades. Copy the limitation; do not summarise it into “full warranty.”
Exclusions are the fields that change a signing decision. Manufacturer booklets commonly tie remaining cover to operation in accordance with the user manual, and warn that departure from the manual may void it. Look for language about modification, attempted repair, erased serial numbers or broken seals, installation that does not follow the stated standards, storage on the customer’s premises, and transport damage directed to the carrier or insurer rather than the equipment issuer. Those categories are reasons to read the booklet attached to your proposal. They are not a substitute for that booklet, and they are not a promise about any model we have not placed on your schedule.
Start date and registration are verification questions. Some documents begin on shipment, some on installation, some on a registration you must complete. Transfer on sale of the house may be allowed, limited, or silent. Maintenance may be a condition of remaining cover. Check maintenance conditions in the equipment documentation and ask what warranties the seller and installer offer. Do not assume an annual visit exists, and do not assume the absence of a visit voids anything, until the page in front of you says so.
Claimant contact is a name, channel and what they will ask for: serial, invoice, photographs, error text, proof of installation date. If the quotation says “we will handle it” without saying who “we” is on the warranty page, the field is still blank.
Labour, removal, freight and call-out belong on their own line. Ask, in writing, who pays a technician to attend, who pays to take the unit off the wall or off the roof, who pays packing and shipping to a service centre, and who pays to refit a replacement. If the documents do not say who covers those costs, ask for clarification before signing; a missing line is not an answer about who is responsible.
Read the agreement and ask how after-sales support works before you commit. Support hours, parts logistics and a named desk are part of the same reading exercise as the warranty term. A brochure line about “after-sales” does not fill the fields.
Inverter Warranty Labour Exclusions To Check
Inverter faults are where the split becomes expensive, because the device is both the system’s conversion equipment and a boxed assembly that may have to travel. Inverter warranty labour exclusions are the clauses that keep hardware cover in place while leaving diagnosis, dismantling, freight and reinstallation outside that cover.
Read the inverter booklet for what the issuer will actually do. Some texts offer repair or replacement of the unit, and stop there. Some require the claimant to return the product. Some treat scratches, transit marks and movement inside packaging as a shipping or insurance matter. If the quotation never says who books the visit or who pays the crate, you still do not know the cost of a valid equipment claim.
Labour exclusions also hide in operating conditions. Charge and discharge limits, installation environment, communication wiring, and “qualified personnel only” instructions are not decoration. If the manual requires a particular setting, indoor location, or pairing method, a later dispute can turn on whether the installed system matches that page. You cannot settle that argument from a brand name. You settle it from the model listed on the proposal plus the current manual that belongs to that model.
Do not treat a hybrid or off-grid label as proof that every failure mode is covered. An inverter can fail as a product. It can also be damaged by an installation error, an unsuitable environment, or work done after handover. Those are different stories, and they need different contacts. Ask the seller to say, in the agreement, who takes an inverter hardware claim and who takes a claim that the unit was fitted or commissioned incorrectly. If both answers point to the same desk, still keep the two files; the desk may need both serial and installation record.
If storage is included, request the warranty text for the exact battery on the equipment schedule and ask the same labour, freight and call-out questions. Nameplate energy does not tell you who pays to remove or replace a cabinet.
Workmanship Cover On A Philippine Installation
What you can do, before you sign, is ask who is responsible if the failure is the work rather than the factory. Typical workmanship questions are concrete: a leaking penetration, a rail that was not fixed as specified, a cable that was landed on the wrong terminal, a protective device that was omitted, damage to roof sheets or waterproofing caused by the installation method. Those events may sit entirely outside module and inverter paper.
Ask for the workmanship obligation in the same pack as the equipment list. Who is named? What trades are included? How long does that obligation run from, and from which event: completion, energisation, or invoice date? Does it cover only the installer’s work, or also making good of finishes? Who attends if the household’s first notice is a ceiling stain rather than an inverter alarm?
If the quotation uses one total for supply and fit, still ask whether product issues and installation issues follow different claim routes. Paying one invoice does not, by itself, prove a single warrantor. If supply and fit are split across two companies, the need to name each contact is even clearer. Obtain the allocation in the agreement. Do not accept a verbal “we coordinate everything” as the filled field.
Site information belongs beside that allocation: roof type, access, existing electrical arrangements, and whether other trades will still be on the roof. Workmanship cover that ignores a planned reroof or a shared structure is cover you have not yet tested against the property. Photographs help a conversation. They do not replace the written scope.
Matching The Failure To A Named Contact
Once the fields exist, use them as a routing guide rather than as a diagnosis. You are not being asked to decide, from the living room, whether a drop in generation is a module defect, an inverter trip, shade, soiling or a setting. You are being asked to know which document and which desk is the starting point for each class of event, so the first call is not a guess.
For a suspected product defect on a panel or inverter, the starting paper is the equipment warranty plus the invoice and serial. The contact is the warrantor named on that paper, or the seller if the agreement says the seller will lodge the claim. For suspected installation damage, the starting paper is the workmanship or installation obligation, and the contact is whoever that obligation names. For a cost the equipment booklet excludes, such as attendance, lifting, freight or reinstallation, the starting paper is the clause that either accepts those costs or leaves them with you.
Keep the questions distinct when you write to either desk. “The inverter displays this fault, serial as attached” is an equipment claim shape. “The flashing at this penetration stains the ceiling after rain” is an installation claim shape. Sending both stories to the wrong file delays both. Sending them without serials, invoices and the original warranty PDF delays them again.
Registration, transfer and maintenance remain questions to confirm against the pages you were given. If cover begins only after an online form, ask who submits it and what proof you will receive. If you may sell the house, ask whether the buyer can take the remaining equipment cover and what notice is required. If a maintenance act is stated as a condition, ask who is expected to perform it and what record counts. Those are checks, not universal rules of the industry.
Keep Serials, Invoices And The Original Booklets
A later claim is paperwork. Retain the quotation, the signed agreement, tax invoices, delivery notes, serial lists, commissioning records you are given, and the warranty PDFs that were current at sale. Photograph nameplates after installation if you are given safe access to do so; do not open enclosures or climb to obtain a number. Store the files where a buyer of the house could find them.
When a proposal lists Felicity Solar equipment, still request the current written warranty for the exact models on that proposal. Brand context is useful for knowing which family of products is being discussed. It is not the claim document. Model revisions change. A user guide for one battery assembly does not speak for a different inverter, and neither document assigns labour on a Philippine site unless it says so.
If the pack is missing a warrantor name, a claim address, or a labour line, stop and ask for those pages before you treat the price as comparable. The place to line that gap up against mounting, electrical work, connection tasks and exclusions is the whole-system quote scope, so you are not comparing a hardware-only number with a fully scoped installation.
The practical answer is unchanged by brochure length. Contact the warrantor named on the equipment document for a product failure, and the party named on the installation or workmanship obligation for damage from the fit. Treat labour, removal, freight and call-out as costs that need their own written owner. Exclusions and operating conditions in the booklet matter before you sign, because they decide whether a later visit is a claim or a bill.
Send us the quotation, the equipment schedule and the warranty files you have been given. We will help you see which responsibility fields are still blank and which product and installation support questions to put back to the seller, so you can sign only when the contacts and the uncovered costs are named.