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You Bought A House With Solar And No Paperwork
There is an array on the roof, an inverter in the loft, and nobody can tell you who fitted it or who owns it.
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What's happening?
Solar arrives with a house more often than it is bought new, and the missing paperwork causes three distinct problems. The first is ownership: some arrays were installed under rent-a-roof leases, where a company owns the panels and holds a long lease of the roof space, and the homeowner gets the electricity but not the export income — that lease binds you and shows in the title, so it is a conveyancing question. The second is income: without the MCS certificate you cannot easily apply for an export tariff, and a legacy feed-in tariff registration has to be transferred rather than inherited automatically. The third is condition: an undocumented system is an unknown high-voltage DC installation on your roof, with unknown age, unknown workmanship and no service history. All three are fixable, and MCS operates a route to look up the certificate for a certified installation, which is usually where to start.
What usually causes it?
- A previous owner who kept, lost or never received the installation documentation
- A rent-a-roof lease where the panels belong to a third party and the roof is leased to them
- A feed-in tariff registration never transferred at sale, so payments still route to the old owner
- An installer that has ceased trading, taking its records with it
- An installation that was never MCS certified, so no certificate exists to find
- A system altered since installation — an inverter or battery replaced without records
Is it dangerous?
An undocumented array is not necessarily unsafe, but it is unverified, and the DC side is live in daylight regardless of what you do at the fuse box. The things worth ruling out early are a loft-mounted inverter with no ventilation, DC cabling chewed by rodents, and isolators that have been overheating. An inspection is worth having in the first year of ownership, not the first time something goes wrong.
Can I fix it myself?
Collect what exists. Photograph the inverter's make, model and serial number, the panel model from the label at the array's edge if it is visible from a window, and every meter in the house. Check your title deeds for a lease of the roof space, which is how a rent-a-roof arrangement shows up. Ask the seller's solicitor for the MCS certificate and any feed-in tariff correspondence, and use the MCS certificate lookup route where nothing is forthcoming. Contact the supplier holding any tariff to transfer it into your name.
When should you call a solar installer?
Call an MCS certified solar installer for an inspection where no documentation exists, where the system's age is unknown, or where you are about to apply for an export tariff and need evidence of the installation. Also call one before any roof work, since panels have to come off and go back on correctly and doing that without knowing the mounting system is asking for a leak.
What will the solar installer actually do?
- Inspect and test the array, DC cabling, isolators and inverter, and report on their condition
- Identify the panel and inverter models and estimate the installation's age
- Check the earthing and protective arrangements against current requirements
- Produce documentation of the system's present condition for your records and for a supplier
- Advise on inverter replacement where the original is near or past its expected life
- Confirm what generation and export metering exists, and what the system is actually capable of
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