Is a free solar site visit actually free?

Every solar installer in India offers a free site visit. The pitch is straightforward: someone shows up at your roof, measures, asks about your bill, and gives you a quote. No money changes hands. What's the catch?

The catch is hiding in plain sight. The person measuring your roof is the same person whose income depends on selling you the largest system they can. You aren't paying in rupees. You're paying in bias.

The economics of a "free" visit

Solar installers in India operate on margins of 18–25%. A site visit costs them roughly ₹500–1,500 in fuel, time, and opportunity cost. They're absorbing that because, on average, one in five visits closes a sale. The math only works if the closes are big enough.

Which means: every free visit is engineered to maximise the chance of a close, and to maximise the size of the close. That's not a moral judgement on installers — it's just how the unit economics force the conversation. The installer's commission scales with system size. Yours doesn't.

What this looks like in your living room

• You ask "what size do I need?" The installer eyeballs your bill, glances at your roof, and recommends 5 kW.
• Your actual usage pattern (lots of AC in summer, almost nothing in winter, ₹4,500/month average bill) suggests 3 kW would have covered 90% of your consumption.
• That extra 2 kW costs ₹1.6–2.4 lakh and produces electricity you sell back to the grid at a rate that takes 9+ years to recoup.
• You don't know this. You agree. The installer makes ₹40–60K more commission.

This isn't a hypothetical. Across the India residential market, oversizing of 1.5–2.5 kW is common in homes where a smaller system would have been more economic. The free visit isn't the cause — the structural conflict of interest is.

What an independent assessment actually buys you

Now flip the situation. An assessor shows up whose income doesn't depend on selling you anything. Their job is to produce a report — sizing, savings projection, BOM, subsidy eligibility, structural notes — that you keep. They get paid for the report, not for the install.

The conversation changes. The questions get sharper. "Why 5 kW and not 3?" gets a real answer with data. "Will this work with my battery?" gets walked through. "Is it worth oversizing for future EV?" gets a math-based answer, not a sales-based one.

And once you have that report, every installer quotes against the same baseline. Their quotes diverge on price, warranty, panel brand, install timeline. Not on sizing assumptions. That's when you can actually compare.

The categories matter

It's tempting to compare ₹0 (free visit) with ₹99 (paid assessment) and conclude that free wins. But these aren't the same product at two prices. They're different categories.

• A free installer visit is a sales call. Paid in bias, recovered in install commission.
• A paid independent assessment is a professional service. Paid in rupees, recovered in better decisions.

Once you see them as different categories, the comparison shifts. You don't compare a sales call to a doctor's second opinion. You don't compare a free real-estate showing to a structural engineer's building report. You pay for independence when independence is what matters.

The numbers

A ₹4 lakh solar decision plays out over 25 years. ₹99 is 0.025% of that decision. If the assessment prevents you from oversizing by even 1 kW — a common scenario — you've saved ₹60–80K. The ROI on the assessment fee is more than 600×.

And at Watt Matters specifically, the ₹99 is refundable if you eventually install through our platform — so for customers who go through to install, the assessment is genuinely free. The fee only stays out of pocket for those who walk away. (And they still get to keep the report.)

What to do next

If you're still in the "is solar even right for me" stage, start with the calculator. It's free, takes 60 seconds, and will tell you honestly — including the cases where solar isn't the right call for your home.

If you're past that stage and ready to commit to actually buying solar, the independent assessment is what saves you a six-figure mistake. That's what ₹99 buys.