Two ways to get solar.
Only one of them
respects your time.
You're a property owner, not a solar engineer. So why are you being asked to make solar engineering decisions? This page is what most landlords don't get told before they sign a quote.
Most commercial solar quotes are written by people who get paid when you sign — not when the system actually works. That's a problem you should know about before you spend a cent.
There are really only two ways to put solar on a commercial building. Here they are, side by side, with the parts the salespeople leave out.
Buy it yourself
You write the cheque. You carry the risk.
The Gridstone way
We carry the cost. We carry the risk.
R1.5M – R3M out of your business, day one. That's cash you can't put into stock, staff, or property.
R0. We fund the entire system. You pay only for the power it produces, monthly, at a rate lower than Eskom.
The salesperson sizes it based on what they want to sell, not what your building actually uses. Oversized systems are common — they cost more and the excess power gets wasted.
We size it to match your real daytime load. We make our money over 10 years, so the system has to actually work — there's no incentive to oversell.
You're handed three quotes with different brand names and asked to pick. You don't know which inverter handles South African voltage swings best. The salesperson does — and quietly recommends what gives them the best margin.
We choose the equipment because we have to live with it for 10 years. Tier-1 panels, proven inverters, suppliers we know will still exist in five years.
Your problem. Most owners don't realise this until a connected system sits idle for three months waiting on paperwork they didn't know they needed.
Our problem. We handle every form, every meeting, every COC. You don't lift a finger.
You hope the installer does it properly. You probably can't tell if the panels are wired correctly, the inverter is mounted in the right spot, or the cabling is rated for the load.
Our partners' accredited teams install it. We sign off the work because the system has to perform on our money for 10 years.
You only find out something's wrong when your Eskom bill quietly creeps back up. By then the issue has probably been there for months.
We monitor the system every day from our side. Most issues we spot before you do. Maintenance is included — there's no separate service contract.
You phone three different suppliers, get bounced between warranties, and pay for repairs while the system sits dead. If the original installer has gone out of business — common — you start from scratch.
You phone us. We fix it. Repairs are on our side of the contract.
It happens more than you'd think. Solar installers come and go — many of the names you'll see in 2026 quotes won't exist in 2030. Your warranty is only as good as the company holding it.
Gridstone is a contracted partner with a 10-year obligation to your building. You can read the contract. You can sue us if we walk away. That's a different kind of accountability.
You can claim allowances, but only if your accountant knows the rules and you've kept every invoice. Most owners leave benefits on the table.
Your monthly payments are a fully deductible operating expense. No depreciation schedules, no tax-time admin.
In 20–25 years it's your problem to dismantle, remove, and replace. Disposal alone is thousands.
After 10 years the system is yours. By then it's paid for itself many times over and still has 15+ years of useful life ahead.
Months — quoting, comparing, deciding, supervising, troubleshooting. All while running your actual business.
One conversation. One contract. We handle the rest.
The four things salespeople leave out.
The quote you got is probably wrong.
Most quotes assume you'll use 100% of the solar power generated. In reality, commercial buildings often use 60–75%. The savings number you're being shown is inflated — sometimes by 40%.
"Free maintenance" usually isn't.
Read the fine print. Most installers offer a one or two year service window, then bill you for every visit. Over 25 years, post-warranty maintenance can cost more than the original system.
Your Eskom relationship is yours to manage.
Bidirectional metering, NRS 097-2 compliance, embedded generation registration. The salesperson installing your panels rarely walks you through the regulatory side — and operating an unauthorised system is a real risk.
Resale value isn't automatic.
An owner-installed system on a building can complicate a sale if records, warranties, and approvals aren't clean. A structured energy contract is far easier to transfer to a buyer.
When buying outright actually makes sense.
We won't pretend Gridstone is right for everyone. Here are the cases where buying outright is genuinely the better call.
- You have an in-house engineer. If your business already employs someone qualified to specify, manage, and maintain the system, you can capture the full margin yourself.
- You have several million in cash earning bond rate. If your money is sitting at 7% in a money market account and your Eskom rate is climbing, the maths can favour buying outright.
- You're an unusual technical case. Heavy industrial loads, unusual voltage requirements, or off-grid sites sometimes need bespoke engineering that doesn't fit a standard PPA structure.
If any of those describe you, we'll happily tell you so on the first call. We'd rather lose a deal honestly than win one we shouldn't have taken.
Still weighing it up?
Send us your last three Eskom bills. We'll tell you which route makes sense for your building — Gridstone or otherwise — within one working day. No pressure, no quote pitched as a sales document.
Talk it through with us