The SEAI Inspection After Your Solar Grant Install

SEAI inspects a sample of homes that receive a solar PV grant, and the visit can happen either before the grant is paid or after it has already landed in your account. You are given two weeks' notice by email, the inspector rings the day before to give you an arrival time, and the visit itself usually runs 30 to 60 minutes. The outcome is recorded as compliant or non-compliant, and you are told which before the inspector leaves your house. Almost nothing about this is in the sales pitch, and the single costliest thing you can do is treat the appointment as optional.

Why There Is an Inspection at All

The €1,800 solar grant is public money, and SEAI does not take the installer's word that the job was done properly. It reserves the right to visit any property that received a solar PV grant, to check the installation was completed in line with the scheme's terms. The scheme's own wording is blunt about the timing: SEAI can inspect "either prior to making a payment in respect of any claim or following a payment in respect of any claim."

That second half is the part people miss. A grant that has already been paid is not a closed file. The terms and conditions tell applicants to hold onto invoices, receipts and completion documents for presentation to SEAI "should your home be chosen for QA inspection at some date in the future." If the folder your installer handed you went into the recycling three months ago, that is a problem you created for yourself.

Be clear about what the inspector is not doing. They are not judging whether solar was a good idea for your house, and they are not grading your installer's workmanship in general. SEAI inspectors only look at the works completed under your grant application and listed on the Declaration of Works. Anything else your installer did on the same visit, a battery you paid for privately, a car charger, a bit of roof repair, sits outside the scope.

How Much Notice You Get

If your home is selected, the SEAI Inspections unit emails you with two weeks' notice of the inspection date. If you did not give an email address on the application, the notification goes by post instead, which is a good reason to check the contact details in your application are right before anything else happens.

There is a detail in that notification worth reading carefully. If SEAI does not hear back from you, it assumes the date and time offered are agreeable. Silence is consent here, so an email sitting unread in a junk folder becomes an appointment you did not know you had.

The day before, the inspector phones to confirm an estimated arrival time. If you can, give them your Eircode on that call — it saves them hunting for the house, which in rural Ireland is not a trivial saving.

The Mistake That Cancels the Grant

For the inspection to go ahead, someone aged over 18 has to be at the property at the agreed time to let the inspector in. That is the whole requirement, and it is also where the real money is at risk.

SEAI's guidance for homeowners puts it in one line: failure to access the property on the scheduled date results in your grant being cancelled. Not deferred, not rescheduled a second time. Cancelled.

The terms and conditions go further for homes that have already been paid. If your property is picked after the money has gone out and SEAI cannot get access, it will reclaim the payment. The obligation in the terms is to grant full access within 14 days of a request, unless you can demonstrate exceptional circumstances to the inspector's satisfaction. Failing that is treated as a breach of the scheme's terms, and where a grant has been paid, SEAI can demand full repayment and expects it within one month of the demand letter.

So the practical advice is dull but worth stating: when the email arrives, put the date in the calendar and arrange for an adult to be home. There is no version of ignoring it that ends well.

What to Have Ready

Your installer submits the scheme paperwork to SEAI electronically, but you should have your own copies to hand on the day. For a solar PV grant, the document set submitted with the request for payment is:

One wrinkle catches people out. SEAI's step-by-step inspection guide for homeowners carries a documentation table, and that table lists safety-file requirements for heat pumps, cavity and external wall insulation, roof insulation, heating controls and solar thermal. There is no solar PV row in it. The guide is written for the Better Energy Homes scheme generally, and the solar grant page links to it as the guide to inspections. For a solar install, work from the list above and from whatever your contractor put in your safety file, not from that table.

If you are unsure who was supposed to give you what, our breakdown of the installer versus homeowner paperwork split sets out all twelve tasks and who owns each one.

What Happens on the Day

The inspector needs to visually inspect the grant works, so they will want access to the panels, the inverter and the relevant electrical connections. Length depends on the size and complexity of the house, but SEAI says inspections typically run between 30 and 60 minutes.

You are told the result before the inspector leaves. That is unusual for a public body and genuinely useful: there is no waiting week wondering. SEAI then emails written confirmation of the outcome afterwards.

There are two possible results.

Compliant

The work passed. No further action is needed from you, your contractor or the inspector. If the inspection happened before payment, your request for payment goes into SEAI's next payment run.

Non-compliant

SEAI issues a Reworks Notification by email to both you and your contractor, setting out exactly what needs rectifying. From there:

• Your contractor has 28 days to fix the non-compliances and return the declaration on the Reworks Notification.
• That declaration has to be signed by both you and your contractor, so you are not a bystander in the process.
• SEAI contacts you to confirm the reworks were actually done as the signed declaration says.
• Where payment was being held pending the inspection, it is then processed. SEAI's guidance is that payment follows about two weeks after the reworks are complete.
• In limited cases SEAI re-inspects a home that failed first time, to confirm the fixes meet the standard.

The obligation to come back and make good sits with the company. The scheme's terms require you to facilitate any reasonable request from SEAI requiring the company to return to the house to make good work that does not meet scheme standards, and the Reworks Notification is addressed to the contractor with the 28-day clock. Who bears the cost of that return visit is a matter of your contract with the installer rather than something SEAI sets, which is one more argument for a written contract that spells out the works, the price and the warranties before anyone climbs on your roof. Our guide to vetting a solar installer covers what that contract should say.

What It Does to Your Payment Timeline

In the normal run of things, SEAI asks you to allow four to six weeks to process the grant payment once the documents are in and the post-works BER has been published. An inspection sits on top of that.

Worth remembering that the eight-month clock on your grant offer is a separate deadline. Once you have grant approval you have eight months to complete the works and submit the Declaration of Works, and after that the grant expires. For the wider picture on how long each stage takes, see our SEAI grant waiting times guide.

If You Went Through a One Stop Shop

Where the work was managed by a One Stop Shop, the access obligation is still yours. You must be there to let the inspector in on the agreed date. What changes is who chases the fix. The One Stop Shop is responsible for engaging the contractor, making sure any reworks are completed, and returning the paperwork.

Note that for solar PV specifically, you can only use a One Stop Shop if you are getting multiple upgrades done at the same time. Solar on its own goes through the individual grant route. More on that in our One Stop Shop guide.

If You Disagree With the Outcome

Complaints and appeals under the Solar PV scheme follow the SEAI Complaints and Appeals Policy set out in the SEAI Customer Charter, and the terms ask both sides to try to resolve things amicably before escalating through that policy.

Three different numbers get confused here, so it is worth separating them. To move an inspection date, ring SEAI Inspections on 01 277 6977. For technical questions about the installation itself, SEAI lists the same number along with solarpv@seaiauditing.ie. For anything about the grant application, offer or payment, the solar PV scheme team is on 01 808 2100 or solarpv@seai.ie.

One thing not to do is quietly fix a non-compliance yourself and tell nobody. The Reworks Notification declaration has to be signed by you and the contractor, and knowingly false statements on scheme documentation can make current and future applications ineligible, on top of the clawback powers that already apply.

Frequently Asked Questions