Solar warranties for Melbourne homes: panels, inverters, batteries and your rights

Product, performance and workmanship warranties

A solar system comes with several warranties from different people, and each covers something different. Solar Victoria describes the panel warranty as two parts: a construction or materials warranty, usually around 10 years though some makers give 25 or more, and a performance warranty, often 25 years. It expects a good panel to make at least 80% of its rating after 25 years.

If a panel cracks from a manufacturing fault, that is the maker’s; if a cable was badly terminated, that is the installer’s. Solar Victoria suggests asking whether the installer will help you claim on the makers’ warranties, and notes that importers are responsible for manufacturers’ warranties, so know who imported your panels.

How long solar panels last

Warranties of the brands we list

These are the makers’ own Australian terms for the panel and inverter brands our previous site listed, checked November 2026. Your written quote names the exact model, so you can read its warranty before you sign.

REC panels and the ProTrust warranty

Solar panel ranges compared

Battery warranties: years, throughput and retained capacity

A home battery warranty has three numbers to read: the term in years, the share of usable capacity the maker promises at the end, and for some makers an energy throughput limit. Once the battery has delivered that much energy, the limit can end the capacity guarantee before the years run out. Alpha ESS’s capacity guarantee, for example, ends at 3.12 MWh per kWh of capacity, about 3,120 full cycles or 8.5 years at one a day (our arithmetic), while its 10-year product warranty runs on.

Most battery makers want the battery registered, monitored or online, and some shorten the warranty when it isn’t. Keep the battery connected to its app and the internet for the whole term.

Every battery warranty compared

What can void a solar warranty?

Warranties are conditional. These are the conditions in the makers’ own Australian documents, and Victorian regulators’ warnings about servicing. None of them takes away your rights under the Australian Consumer Law, covered next.

Keep the invoice, the commissioning report and the serial numbers in one place, and keep any registration logins. Almost every claim starts with them.

How often to service solar

Cleaning panels without voiding the warranty

Servicing that protects the warranty

Your rights under the Australian Consumer Law

Products bought from an Australian business come with consumer guarantees regardless of any other warranty, Consumer Affairs Victoria says. For a home solar system, that covers the equipment and the installation:

• The panels, inverter and battery: acceptable quality: fit for its usual purpose, safe, durable and free from defects; matches its description; fit for any purpose you told the seller about; repairs and spare parts available for a reasonable time; any extra promises (express warranties) honoured.
• The installation: done with due care and skill, fit for any purpose you told them about and finished within a reasonable time.

Major and minor failures

For a major failure you can reject it and choose a refund or replacement, or keep it and be compensated for the drop in value. For a minor one, the seller chooses to repair it within a reasonable time, replace it or refund you. If an installation wasn’t done with due care and skill and the business won’t fix it, you can have it fixed by someone else and recover the costs. Consumer Affairs Victoria adds that it is generally the seller’s job to return a faulty product to the manufacturer for repair, and that for a major fault in a product that is too large or difficult to remove, such as one that has been installed, the seller pays the initial cost of returning it.

After the warranty ends

The guarantees don’t stop when a written warranty does. Consumer Affairs Victoria says you may be entitled to a repair, replacement or refund regardless of whether the product is still under warranty. How a fault is judged depends on the type of product, its price and what the seller or label said about it. Fair wear and tear and damage from misuse or abnormal use are not faults. Extended warranties are optional, and a seller must not pressure you into one.

Sellers signed up to the New Energy Tech Consumer Code also commit to complaints dealt with promptly, issues fixed and warranties honoured.

1. Raise it with the seller in writing. Solar Victoria advises this first, and it gives you a record.
2. Then Consumer Affairs Victoria. Call 1300 55 81 81 or use its complaint form.
3. Then a tribunal. Solar Victoria points to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), or independent legal advice.

Which brand do I have? Finding the make, model and serial number

Every claim starts with the make, model and serial number. You can find them without going on the roof or opening anything:

• The inverter’s label. The rating plate on the side shows the maker, model and serial number. Photograph it; don’t open the unit.
• The monitoring app. Its device page names the inverter and any battery. Fronius shows the warranty certificate in Solar.web next to a registered inverter.
• The paperwork. The invoice and quote name the models, and the system documents the installer must hand over under AS/NZS 5033:2021 and AS/NZS 4777.1:2016 include a list of the equipment supplied, with each model and serial number (Solar Victoria), sometimes behind a QR code inside the switchboard. Keep them with your Certificate of Electrical Safety.
• The STC records. The panel and inverter serial numbers are listed in the Clean Energy Regulator’s REC Registry for the STCs, so the installer or the STC agent holds them.
• The panels. Their labels are on the back, so ask for them to be read during a service.

Look, don’t touch: the inverter, isolators and switchboard are for a licensed electrician. Finding your system in its app.

Installer gone? Claiming from the manufacturer

When the installer has closed, its workmanship warranty usually goes with it, but the makers’ warranties don’t. Consumer Affairs Victoria says you can claim from the manufacturer or the seller when a product is not of acceptable quality, doesn’t match its description or doesn’t meet an express warranty, and that the manufacturer is whoever made, assembled, branded or imported it (when the maker has no office in Australia).

1. Gather the paperwork. The invoice, the commissioning report and the serial numbers. Canadian Solar asks for the serial numbers and your invoice; Sungrow for proof of purchase, such as your invoice, receipt or commissioning report.
2. Contact the maker in Australia. Use its own claim route, in the makers’ contacts table below: Canadian Solar takes written claims at its Australian office in Melbourne, and a Sungrow claim can be lodged online by you or your installer.
3. Get a licensed electrician to diagnose it. Don’t open equipment yourself, and don’t replace a part before the maker agrees.
4. Budget for labour. Canadian Solar’s terms leave the cost of removing and refitting panels with the owner, and Sungrow’s don’t cover on-site installation costs. REC ProTrust is the exception: REC pays a fixed labour fee to an REC Certified Solar Professional installer for approved claims, even if the original installer has gone out of business.

If you paid a deposit to an installer that became insolvent, Consumer Affairs Victoria suggests a chargeback if you paid by credit card (time limits apply), or registering with the administrator or liquidator as an unsecured creditor, who is paid last.

When the maker wants a local electrician on site, and what to have ready

Makers usually want a licensed electrician to diagnose the fault on site, and the visit is usually yours to pay for. Sungrow and GoodWe recommend a local electrician when the installer can’t attend (GoodWe wants to authorise the visit first), and Fox ESS lets you appoint a local installer to act for one that has closed. A registered Fronius inverter is the exception: Warranty Plus covers servicing. Have the model, serial number, proof of purchase, install date, error code and photos ready.

Warranty claims when your installer has closed

Systems installed by another company

When the brand has left: LG

Brands leave too. LG Electronics announced on 23 February 2022 that it was closing its solar panel business, with the closure due by 30 June 2022, and said it would maintain support for customers of existing LG solar panels for a period of time after the business’s closure has been completed (LG’s announcement). It gave no end date. Solar Victoria notes that some makers back their warranty with prepaid insurance that pays out even if the maker goes out of business, while insurance paid year by year can lapse. Ask which applies before you buy.

Canadian Solar’s warranty in full

Australian warranty and support contacts by maker

Each maker’s own Australian claim route, from its website or warranty, with a phone number only where the maker publishes one.

Battery warranties compared

Home insurance and solar panels

A warranty covers faults; home insurance covers events. Canadian Solar’s warranty excludes flood, fire and lightning, the kinds of events a home policy lists: Moneysmart gives flood, storm, theft, fire, lightning, earthquake and malicious damage as examples. Home building insurance covers the building itself and its fixtures, and Moneysmart says the rebuild cost you insure can include landscaping, rubbish removal and solar panels.

• Tell your insurer and update the sum insured. Check that it reflects changes to the property, and review it at least every 12 months.
• Avoid underinsurance. Moneysmart says most policies reduce claims when cover falls below 80 to 90% of the rebuild cost. The Insurance Council’s calculators help estimate it.
• Read the exclusions. The product disclosure statement and Key Fact Sheet list them; Moneysmart’s examples include damage from the sea, smoke, landslides and power failures.
• Ask about the battery. Check the policy treats a home battery the same way as the panels, and whether optional accidental damage cover is worth adding.

Our workmanship warranty and claims help

Why choose us

Solar repairs and servicing

Solar warranties: your questions