Solar PV and battery storage is a specialty within electrical work. Panel accreditation (Clean Energy Council) and battery accreditation (BESS) are additional certifications beyond a standard electrical licence, and system design involves PV-specific expertise most general electricians don't hold. Rather than spread ourselves thin, Millar Electrics focuses on core electrical work and refers solar/battery enquiries to installers we've worked alongside across the eastern suburbs. Why don't we do solar ourselves? Short answer: to do it well you need Clean Energy Council accreditation, current product knowledge on panels and inverters that change every year, and the bench depth to install and maintain it for the 25+ year panel warranty period. One-person general electrical businesses that "also do solar" rarely deliver on any of those fronts. We'd rather tell you that than take your money and hand the job off to someone cheaper.
What we can do: help you evaluate quotes you've received, sanity-check whether your existing switchboard can accept a PV inverter, and handle the follow-on electrical work most solar projects trigger — adding a dedicated circuit for a heat pump, running power to a new battery cabinet, or wiring an EV charger to draw from your own generation. Ask us for a referral and we'll point you at someone we'd use on our own house.
Standards the work has to meet
Solar PV installations are governed by AS/NZS 5033 (PV array installation), grid-connect inverters by AS/NZS 4777.1 and AS/NZS 4777.2 (grid-connected energy systems), and battery storage by AS/NZS 5139 (electrical installations — safety of battery systems). When we review a quote, that's what we check it against — alongside Clean Energy Council accreditation for the installer and the Victorian Distributed Energy Resources Register requirements for the inverter model. The interface with the rest of your installation (consumer mains, switchboard, isolation, surge protection) is AS/NZS 3000 — that's our side of the boundary.