Income Protection for Solar Panel Installers
Most construction risks are specialised. This one is doubled up.
A solar installer spends the morning carrying heavy panels up onto a pitched domestic roof, fixing rails into rafters, and the afternoon wiring a direct current array into an inverter and a consumer unit. Either half of that would be a trade on its own, with its own training and its own accident profile.
Income protection pays a monthly amount while you cannot work. For this trade the thing to understand is that there are two separate routes to a long absence rather than one.
The short answer
Solar installation is the unusual case of one trade carrying two trades' risks at once: working on a pitched roof and working with live electrical systems, frequently on the same job and sometimes at the same moment. Panels are also heavy and awkward to handle at height, and the work is often on domestic roofs that were never designed to be worked on.
What actually stops you working
- Falls from pitched roofs, ladders and scaffold, which is the dominant serious risk in this trade
- Falls through roof coverings and rooflights, particularly on older or non-domestic buildings
- Electrical injuries from direct current arrays, which remain live whenever there is daylight and cannot simply be switched off
- Back and shoulder injuries from carrying and positioning panels at height, often one-handed on a slope
- Hand, wrist and knee injuries from working kneeling on a pitch with tools for whole days
- Heat and sun exposure, since the work is outdoors on reflective surfaces in the better weather by definition
Sick pay, if you get any
Depends on your arrangement. Installers employed by an established renewables firm may have occupational sick pay. A large part of this trade is self-employed or working through small companies, often subcontracting to installers who hold the certification, and those have no sick pay at all while van, tools, scaffold hire and any certification costs continue. Day rate subcontracting is common and is the weakest position.
Why the definition of incapacity decides it
The clause matters because the job needs full physical capability at height. Somebody with a repaired shoulder, a bad back or a knee that will not take a pitched roof can do plenty of ground-level work, including some electrical work, which is what an any occupation definition will find. An own occupation definition asks whether you can install solar, which means getting panels onto roofs.
A Solar Array Cannot Be Switched Off
This is the hazard that genuinely distinguishes solar work from both roofing and ordinary electrical work, and it is worth understanding properly.
A conventional circuit can be isolated. A photovoltaic array generates whenever light falls on it, so the direct current side is live during daylight by its nature. Isolation on the alternating current side does not change what the panels and the string cabling are doing, and direct current at array voltages behaves differently from mains alternating current in a fault.
The reason this belongs on an insurance page rather than only in a training manual is that it is the mechanism for the most serious non-fall injuries in this trade, and it happens on a roof where the consequence of any shock includes falling off. That compounding is specific to solar.
Carrying Panels Is The Injury Nobody Plans For
The falls get the attention and the manual handling does the steady damage.
A domestic panel is large, awkward and heavy enough to be a two-person lift on the ground, and it has to be moved up onto a pitched roof and positioned accurately on rails while you are standing on a slope. Doing that repeatedly, in wind, is a mechanism for shoulder and lower back injuries that has nothing to do with falling.
Those are also the injuries that recur. A shoulder that has gone once tends to go again under the same load, and in a trade where the load is the product, there is no lighter version of the work to come back to. That argues for arranging cover before the first episode rather than after, because anything in your records when you apply will be asked about.
If you stop
Installations are usually booked in sequence with scaffold already arranged, so an absence breaks a schedule rather than one job. Scaffold hire that is standing idle still charges, deposits may have been taken, and customers waiting on an install date tend not to wait long. For a small installer the schedule is the business, and it unravels quickly.
Usually Nothing From Work, Often A Young Workforce
Self-employed and subcontract installers have no death in service, so whatever a household would be left with is whatever has been arranged personally.
This is a relatively young and fast-growing trade, which means two things. A lot of people in it have mortgages and young children and no cover at all, and life cover at that age in good health is about as cheap as it ever gets.
Where a van, tools or equipment are financed, that debt generally falls on the estate. Working out what the household actually needs, plus enough to clear those agreements, gives a figure worth arranging rather than guessing at.
Two Trades' Worth Of Places To Go
The likely career-ending scenario is a body that will not work on a pitched roof any more, at an age well short of retirement.
The advantage of this trade is that half of it is not physical. An installer who cannot do roof work may still be able to do design, survey, commissioning, inverter and battery work, or run installations rather than performing them, and those are genuine destinations rather than consolation prizes.
What the move needs is capital: a qualification, equipment, or a period on lower income while you establish the new side. A lump sum on diagnosis provides that, which income protection, paying while you cannot work, is not designed to do.
Certification, Scaffold And A Schedule
If you run installations rather than just working on them, there are three fixed exposures worth insuring around.
Scaffold hire charges whether anybody is working off it, so a stalled job costs money daily. Any certification or accreditation the business trades on has renewal requirements that continue through an absence. And where the certification sits with one individual, the business cannot take on compliant work without that person, which is the sharpest version of single point of failure.
Cover can be sized against those costs as well as your personal income, and cover on whoever holds the accreditations is worth considering separately. That is arranged by and paid to the business rather than the individual.
Common questions
Is this different from cover for a roofer or an electrician?+
The product is the same and the risk is both of theirs at once. A roofer faces falls, an electrician faces electrical injury, and a solar installer faces both on the same job, with the added point that an array cannot be isolated during daylight and a shock on a roof includes the fall that follows.
Would a fall from a roof be covered?+
Being unable to work through injury is what the cover responds to, regardless of how it happened or who was at fault. Falls are the dominant serious risk in this trade, and a claim turns on whether you can do your occupation afterwards rather than on the circumstances.
I subcontract on day rates. What do I have to fall back on?+
Generally nothing, and no statutory sick pay either since that is for employees. Van, tools and any certification costs carry on. That usually means a shorter deferred period makes sense than it would for an employed installer with a sick pay scheme.
Would a shoulder injury from lifting panels be covered?+
Yes, being unable to work through injury is the test, and manual handling injuries from positioning panels at height are a common route to a long absence. These tend to recur under the same load, which is a reason to arrange cover before the first episode rather than after.
Can I cover scaffold hire and other business costs?+
Worth going through, because scaffold charges whether or not anybody is working off it, and a stalled installation costs money daily. Sizing cover against your personal income alone often understates what is actually at risk for a small installer.
Cover that often goes with this
The gaps we most often find sitting next to this one.
Working for yourself?
Income protection covers your own earnings. It does not cover what the business owes other people, so if you work for yourself you probably need public liability and tools cover as well. That side is arranged by CoverTrade. Business insurance for solar panel installers.