About SolarZA

Why this site exists

We built SolarZA after watching three friends try to buy solar in 2023 and 2024. One paid for an "8kW system" that turned out to be a 5kW inverter with a stretched panel array. One filled in five quote forms and got two replies, both from sales agents who had never seen the property. One paid R140,000 upfront and waited four months for the install to start.

The information online was no help. Vendor blogs talked up payback periods that assumed perfect conditions and tariffs from two years ago. Forum threads were either flame wars or year-old advice. The good installers were quietly busy and had no time to write content.

So we started writing the guide we wished those friends had — local prices, local tariffs, local rules, and a directory of installers we have actually been able to reach.

What we do

Two things. We publish solar buying guides that focus on South African conditions: Eskom tariffs, NRS-097-2-1 rules, Cape Town net-metering, the temperature derating you actually see in Limpopo summers. And we run a marketplace that connects homeowners with installers we have vetted — verified contact details, current service areas, real Google ratings.

The marketplace is paid by installers, not by homeowners. Installers buy access to leads they want to quote on. Homeowners always get the service for free, and we never sell a single homeowner's details to more installers than they have chosen to share with.

How we research

• Pricing comes from public listings (Takealot, manufacturer pages, retailer ads), real installer quotes shared with us, and supplier wholesale lists.
• Tariff and grid-tie rules come from NERSA, the relevant municipality, and the installer's engineer.
• Product specs come from manufacturer datasheets — not from reseller marketing pages, which round generously.
• We add a verification date to anything that moves with the market, so you can see how stale a number is before you act on it.

What we get wrong

Plenty. Solar pricing in South Africa moves with the rand, with shipping, with load shedding cycles. Inverter models get rebadged. Installers leave the industry. We try to date everything we publish, fix corrections fast, and be honest about what we are not sure about. If you find an error, email hello@solarza.co.za and we will fix it (and credit you if you want).

How we make money

Three ways. Installers pay per lead they unlock from our board. We carry third-party display advertising, served by Google and labelled as advertising, which we keep off the quote form, the matching flow and the installer dashboards. And affiliate links on some product pages pay us a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you.

That is the whole list. None of it buys editorial outcomes: paying for leads does not move a business up a directory listing or change how it is described, advertisers cannot commission or alter content, and no manufacturer pays us to write favourably about its equipment.

Who runs SolarZA

SolarZA is operated by a small independent team based in South Africa. We are software and data people by background, not solar installers, and we would rather say that than imply trade credentials we do not hold. What we are good at is gathering and checking data at a scale an individual buyer cannot, then computing on it and showing our working.

Because pieces are researched and edited collectively rather than owned by an individual writer, articles carry a team byline instead of a personal one. Where a claim rests on trade judgement rather than published data, we say so, and where we are uncertain we say that too.

Our editorial standards set out where every figure comes from, how listings are compiled and what our badges do and do not mean. The full disclosure page covers the commercial side in detail.