In this article
From signed agreement to a working system is eight stages, and the one that takes the longest is not ours. Grid connection approval sits with the network operator and runs from a few days to about four weeks if an engineering assessment is triggered. Everything else is measured in hours.
Project timeline
- Project set up within 24 hours of signing. Design assessment within 48. Applications lodged straight after.
- Grid connection approval is the long pole: usually under a week, up to four weeks where an engineering assessment is required.
- Installation day starts between 7 and 9 am. Have your WiFi password ready if anything being installed connects.
- Your project hub keeps every document and photo permanently, so a lost warranty PDF in year six is not a problem.
Project setup — within 24 hours
Your project hub is created at projects.pswenergy.com.au, holding the signed agreement, your product information and the imagery from the job. It stays there. We send a welcome email with the same detail, the install date goes on the calendar, and accounts raises the invoice within 24 to 48 hours.
Nothing is required from you at this stage. If we needed something else we would have asked during the consultation.
Design assessment — 24 to 48 hours later
A second person checks the design. This is an internal review and it exists because the cost of catching a problem here is a phone call, and the cost of catching it on the roof is a crew standing around. Where the system needs Western Power approval to connect, this is where that gets prepared properly rather than quickly.
Applications — once the deposit lands
Two applications, in order. First we apply to your energy retailer on your behalf and you receive a Retailer Reference Number. You do not need to forward it — we get a copy at the same time. Then we lodge the grid connection application with the supply authority using that number.
This is the stage that decides your timeline. Most approvals come back inside a week. If the network operator wants an engineering assessment — more likely on a larger system, a three-phase property, or a street already carrying a lot of solar — it can run to four weeks. Nobody can compress that, and any installer promising you a date before this clears is guessing.
Your deposit is deducted from the balance owing and you get a paid-deposit invoice by email. What a deposit may legally be in Western Australia is worth knowing: see the statutory cap.
Installation day
Technicians arrive between 7 and 9 am and walk you through where everything is going before they start — speak up then if a position does not suit, because afterwards it is real work to change. Have your WiFi name and password to hand for anything that connects.
At the end they will run you through operating the system and ask you to complete a short survey on how they did. That survey is read.
After installation — 24 hours, then 7 days
The final balance falls due and you get a zero-balance invoice once it is paid. Internally, the install is reviewed against the test results and the technicians’ photos, compliance notices are lodged with the authorities, and your monitoring portal is commissioned — login details within 72 hours.
A week later we send the paperwork you will actually want later: manual operation instructions in plain text, and the warranty documents in one email rather than several. We register the product with the manufacturer on your behalf, because most warranties require a certified installer to do it and an unregistered product is a warranty argument waiting to happen.
Review — 3 to 6 months
We come back once you have lived with it through a season. By then you know what it does on a hot day and whether the bill moved, which is when the useful questions occur to people. If something is not doing what you expected, this is the conversation to have it in.
After that it is PSW Life Support, which is support for the life of the system rather than the length of the warranty.