Now that the crazy load shedding is a little better, we can sit back and look at the type of system to be installed. We havent had load shedding for months.

The budget is always the first consideration.

I am sure many would agree that the warranty period would be at the top of the list. Will the company still be around to honour the warranty? Was it installed correctly and will the installer be required to have some form of certification or approval?

Then we need to look at the training and product support, has your installer completed formal training with some form of certification to indicate they are familair with a specific brand or do you trust that they have done the same thing 50 times without any formal brand specific training.

You will need to consider the monthly fee which you will have to pay once you have registered your SSEG.

Feed back tarrifs would need to be taken into account when sizing the solar array.

Then we have to consider the location to fit the components, like the lithium battery and what seems to have become the real risk (the home made DC control boxes). Photos I have seen floating around the internet seem to indicate that the batteries are not bursting into flames and burning down houses, there seems to be a bigger problem with the solar DC. Lets hope these systems are fitted with some form of protection so that they can be installed anywhere inside the house, which will also be a massive saving in cable and labour costs.

Simple things like the look and space required for some of these systems. when you look at how much space some inverters and batteries take up, compared to these all in one systems, which are stackable, saving time and material costs. I think the old style of inverter, battery and a bunch of surface mount DB's and fuse etc all over the wall are going to be slowly phased out.

Most quality brands now offer a slim pleasant looking stackable system which takes up limited space and hides all the cabling within the units. SRNE, MyEnergi libbi, Huawei and Livoltek are a good examples.