Editorial standards

Who writes this

SolarZA is published by a small independent South African team. We are software and data people by background, not solar installers, and we say so rather than implying trade credentials we do not hold. What we are good at is gathering, checking and computing on data at a scale an individual buyer cannot, and then explaining what it means.

Because pieces are researched and edited collectively rather than owned by an individual writer, articles carry a team byline instead of a personal one. We would rather attribute honestly to the group that actually did the work than attach a name to writing for the appearance of authority.

Where a claim depends on trade judgement rather than published data, we say where the judgement comes from, and where we are uncertain we say that too.

Where our numbers come from

Equipment specifications and warranty terms come from manufacturer datasheets and published warranty documents, not from reseller marketing copy, which routinely overstates both. Where a manufacturer and a reseller disagree, we use the manufacturer.

Irradiance figures are regional averages of global horizontal irradiance drawn from the published South African solar resource data. They describe an area, not a specific roof, and every page that uses them says so alongside the number.

Electricity tariffs are expressed as ranges spanning the real spread across Eskom residential schedules and municipal tariffs, because there is no single national rate and any page that quotes one is wrong for most readers. We consistently tell readers to divide their own bill by their own units rather than trust an average, including ours.

Installed price bands are observed market ranges, not quotes. Nobody can quote a system without seeing the roof and the distribution board.

How we handle calculations

Every generation, saving and payback figure on this site is computed on the page from stated inputs, and the assumptions are printed next to the result rather than buried in a footnote. That includes the performance ratio, the self-consumption share, the tariff range and what the payback deliberately excludes.

We bias our estimates pessimistic. Payback figures assume electricity prices never rise again, which they will, and exclude finance costs, maintenance and inverter replacement. A reader who acts on our numbers should be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

If you think a figure is wrong, the arithmetic is on the page so you can check it. Tell us and we will correct it or show our working.

How directory listings are compiled

Installer listings are built from public business records and companies’ own published material, then checked for internal consistency and de-duplicated. Where a business claims its listing, it can correct and control what appears.

Every listing states its own status. An unclaimed listing says it is unclaimed, and each profile names the specific fields we do not hold rather than presenting a partial record as a complete one. A "verified" badge means the business has confirmed it controls the contact details shown. It is not an accreditation, not an endorsement of workmanship, and not an audit of the certifications claimed, and we say that on the badge itself.

Certifications shown on a listing are as stated by the business. We decode what each certification means and link to an explainer, but we do not independently verify certificate numbers with issuing bodies, so we tell readers to do that themselves before signing.

Ordering within a listing is by claim status, then rating, then review volume, applied in code with no manual override.

Any business can have its listing corrected or removed on request, free of charge, whether or not it has ever paid us anything.

Where commercial interests sit

The site earns from installers paying to unlock enquiries, from display advertising, and from affiliate commission on some retailer links. All three are set out in full on our disclosure page.

None of them buys editorial outcomes. Paying for enquiries does not move a business up a listing or change how it is described. Advertisers cannot commission or alter content. Affiliate commission does not decide which products we cover or recommend, and we say when the cheaper product is the better buy.

Where we have a commercial interest in a page, the page says so.

What we will not publish

Fabricated listings, example businesses or placeholder reviews presented as real. A previous version of this directory carried a demonstration listing with an invented rating; it has been removed, and sample data does not go into production.

Ratings or review counts we did not obtain from a disclosed source, or third-party ratings marked up as though they were ours.

Claims about installers we cannot support. We do not describe listings as "vetted" or "approved" when we have not audited them.

Specific performance or payback promises for a property we have not seen.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, we would rather know. Email hello@solarza.co.za or use the contact page, and tell us the page and what is incorrect.

We correct errors on the page rather than quietly deleting them, and where a correction changes the substance of a recommendation we note that the page was corrected and when. Pages carry a published date and, where they have been revised, a last-reviewed date, so you can judge how current the information is.