Solar is the biggest thing most households will buy for the house apart from the house itself, and people research it like that. The person searching “solar panels Dublin” or “SEAI solar grant installer” has read the forums, watched the neighbours’ panels go up, and has a bill in their hand. They want to know if you are SEAI registered so they can get the grant, what a system for a three-bed semi roughly costs, whether a battery is worth it, who handles the paperwork, and whether your promises are the honest kind. Websites for solar installers in Dublin have to carry a lot of trust on one screen, because the customer has already seen the ones that promise the earth.
Registered with SEAI, and said plainly
The SEAI grant for solar PV is only paid when the work is done by an installer on their registered list, so your registration is the first fact on the page, with your company name as it appears on that list. Say that you handle the grant application for the customer, what the customer needs to provide, and roughly how long the grant process takes in your experience. Then the other paperwork: the notification to ESB Networks for connecting to the grid, and the electrical certification for the installation. A customer who sees the paperwork laid out stops worrying about it.
The form that does the first survey
A solar estimate depends on the roof and the usage, and you cannot give one from “how much for solar”. So the enquiry form asks what you would ask on the phone: the Eircode, the roof direction and type, any shading, the approximate annual electricity use or a photo of a bill, whether they want a battery, whether they have or plan an electric car or a heat pump, and when they are thinking of going ahead.
With that you can produce a proper estimate from a desk and a satellite view, and the customer gets a real number instead of a sales call. The form lands in your email and WhatsApp.
The honest answer to “how much will I save”
Every solar customer asks it and every bad website answers it with a big number. Yours should say that the saving depends on the system size, the roof, how much electricity is used during the day, and whether surplus is exported for payment or stored in a battery, and that your quote comes with an estimate worked out for their house.
Explain plainly what happens on a cloudy day, in winter, and at night. Explain what the battery does and when it is worth it. Explain the warranties on panels, inverter and your own workmanship in years. People trust the installer who tells them the limits.
Real roofs in real estates
Your installs are on ordinary Dublin roofs: a semi-d in an estate, a dormer bungalow, a terraced house with a tight back roof. Photograph them, from the road and from the garden, with the inverter and battery neatly mounted in the garage or utility. A line under each with the system size, whether there is a battery, and anything tricky, a split roof, a chimney shadow.
Renders and stock photos of fields of panels tell a homeowner nothing. Twenty real roofs tell them you have done their house before. Ask every customer for permission at handover, and ask for a review at the same time; a customer who has just seen their first sunny day’s generation on the app is a happy reviewer.
From enquiry to switched on
Lay out the steps so the customer knows what happens next: enquiry and desk estimate, a site survey, a fixed quote and system design, the grant application, the install (usually a day or two on site), the connection paperwork, the handover with the monitoring app, and the grant paid out. Give rough timings for each where you can and say what you need from the customer at each step.
Heat pumps, EV chargers and hot water diverters sit well as add-ons on the same page, and an electrician or heating engineer you work with is worth a mention where the jobs overlap.
What we need from you
Your SEAI registration details. Twenty photos of finished installs with a line each. Your process and rough timings. Your warranties. From prices for typical system sizes if you are willing to show them, and your position on batteries and export payments. The counties you cover. Half an hour, because this trade has more to explain than most.
The plan we recommend
For a solar installer we recommend Complete: €1,499 to set up and €100 a month, VAT on top, no contract. It brings Google Ads for the spring and summer searches (you pay Google directly, we run them), a chat box that answers “am I eligible for the grant” and “do you cover Meath” at 10pm from your own details, review requests after every handover, and business email on your own domain for the quotes. If you are a small operation with more work than you can take, Essentials at €499 and €50 covers the site and the listing. The two are on the pricing page, and how to get business email on your own domain explains why a quote from a free webmail address loses to one from your own.