Who pays when the array blows off the roof?

A customer assumes the twenty five year warranty covers everything. It does not cover storm, lightning, flood, fire or theft, and neither does yours.

Those are insurance events, and on most Indian rooftop installations nobody has arranged any.

The two phases, with different risks

During installation, the risk is damage to the work in progress, damage to the customer's building, and injury to your crew. This is normally covered by a contractor's or erection all risk policy, together with workmen's compensation and public liability cover carried by you.

If you do not carry public liability and workmen's compensation, that is worth fixing regardless of what any customer asks for. Work at height, on old roofs, with heavy glass, is exactly the activity those policies exist for, and the exposure is not theoretical.

After commissioning, the asset belongs to the customer and the risk transfers with it. Now the questions are: is the plant insured, under whose policy, and for how much.

The declaration customers forget

Most homes and commercial buildings already carry a fire and special perils policy. A rooftop solar plant is a substantial new asset physically attached to that building, and it is generally not automatically covered by an existing policy that predates it.

So the customer needs to tell their insurer, and add the plant to the sum insured. Two things follow from that:

• The sum insured needs a number, which comes from your invoice. A customer who cannot produce the installed cost cannot insure the plant properly.
• Undeclared additions can complicate a claim on the building itself, not merely on the plant. This is the argument that gets a customer to act, and it is worth making at handover.

What to ask the insurer about

A short list the customer can take to their broker:

• Storm, cyclone and wind damage. The relevant peril in coastal and cyclone exposed districts, and the one most likely to remove an array.
• Lightning and surge. Related but distinct. Surge damage to an inverter is a common claim, and the protection practice is in one ohm, and the fire that starts in a connector.
• Fire, both damage to the plant and damage the plant causes.
• Flood and inundation, which matters mainly for ground mounted or basement located equipment.
• Theft. Modules and copper cable are stolen in some areas, and unoccupied or remote sites are the exposure.
• Third party liability. A module leaving a roof in a storm and landing on somebody is the scenario nobody plans for.
• Business interruption, for commercial sites where a fire involving the plant could stop production.

Where this sits commercially

For C and I projects it is often not optional. Lenders financing a system, and developers owning one under a RESCO arrangement, typically require insurance as a condition, and will specify the perils and the sum insured. If you are building for a developer, as discussed in RESCO took 40 percent of C and I, their requirements will arrive with the contract.

For residential work it is almost always ignored, which is precisely why mentioning it distinguishes you. It costs one line in the handover pack and one sentence in the conversation, and it is the kind of advice customers remember as evidence that you were thinking about their asset rather than your invoice.

What belongs in your documents

In the proposal: a line stating that the plant should be added to the building's insurance after commissioning, and that storm, fire, lightning and theft are insurance matters rather than warranty matters.

In the handover pack: the installed cost and the equipment list, which is what the insurer will ask for, alongside the items in the handover that stops the callbacks.

In the AMC: an explicit exclusion for damage from storm, lightning, fire and theft, so the boundary between maintenance and insurance is written down before anything happens. The rest of that scope is in an annual maintenance contract a customer will actually buy.

The short version

• Warranties do not cover storm, lightning, fire, flood or theft. Those are insurance events.
• During installation, you should be carrying public liability and workmen's compensation, plus erection cover for the work itself.
• After commissioning the asset is the customer's, and it usually needs declaring to their existing building insurer with a sum insured taken from your invoice.
• Ask the broker about storm, lightning and surge, fire, flood, theft, third party liability and, for commercial sites, business interruption.
• Lenders and RESCO developers normally require cover and will specify it.
• Put it in the proposal, the handover pack and the AMC exclusions. Do not advise on cover yourself.