Most solar install businesses don’t go under because of one bad job. They go under because something stops the job queue for six weeks while the wages, the ute repayments and the software subscriptions keep coming out every fortnight. A storm takes out the shed and the stock in it, your lead installer does a knee coming off a ladder, or a container of inverters sits on a wharf. The work is still there, but you can’t do it, so nothing gets invoiced.

Business interruption insurance exists for exactly that gap. In my experience it’s also the policy installers understand least. Most operators I know can tell you their public liability limit off the top of their head. Ask them their BI indemnity period and you usually get a blank look, or “I think the broker put something in there.”

This guide puts business interruption cover in the context of an Australian solar install business: what it is, what actually triggers it, how to work out an indemnity period, and where it sits next to the other policies you already carry.

Why the existing advice doesn’t help Australian installers

Search for business interruption insurance for solar contractors and you mostly get US broker pages built to collect leads. They’re full of stat blocks and they treat BI as a box you tick because a lender or a head contractor requires it (CoverageAxis, n.d.-a; CoverageAxis, n.d.-b). The broader US solar contractor insurance pages are the same. They list policies to sell you, not decisions you need to make (Insureon, n.d.).

None of that covers CEC accreditation, our state-based workers compensation schemes, or what a stalled job queue actually looks like in an Australian install business. So I’ll come at it from the operator’s side.

What business interruption insurance actually is

Business interruption (BI) cover pays to replace the income you lose and the costs you still carry while the business can’t trade normally after an insured event. You’ll often see it sold as part of a business pack alongside property cover rather than as a policy on its own.

The point most people miss is that BI cover usually depends on material damage. In most standard Australian policies, the interruption has to be caused by physical loss or damage that’s covered under your property section: fire, storm, flood (if you have it), burglary and so on. No covered damage usually means no BI claim. That one detail decides most of the trigger scenarios below.

A solar install business is a bit unusual here. You don’t depend on foot traffic through a shopfront. Your income depends on three things: a booked job queue, a working crew, and stock arriving on time. BI cover is built around protecting premises and property. Before you buy it, ask how well that protection actually lines up with the three things your revenue depends on.

Three trigger scenarios an install crew actually faces

Whether any of these is covered comes down to your policy wording. I’m not your broker and I haven’t read your policy. Treat the following as the questions to ask, not a set of answers.

Storm damage to your premises or stock

This is the scenario BI was built for. A severe storm takes the roof off your warehouse, water gets into a pallet of panels and a rack of inverters, and the forklift is under a collapsed wall. You’re unable to dispatch jobs for weeks.

If your property section covers the storm damage, your BI section should respond to the lost gross profit and ongoing costs while you rebuild, subject to the waiting period and indemnity period. A good policy will also cover increased cost of working: renting a temporary yard, paying to have stock delivered direct to site, or extra hours to catch up on the backlog.

Check two things. First, whether stock held at a supplier’s premises or in transit is covered. Second, whether damage to a customer’s site that stops you working there counts. Those are often separate extensions.

An injured installer

This one catches people out. If your best installer is off for three months, your capacity drops and so does your revenue. Most standard BI policies won’t respond to that, because there’s no material damage to insured property.

The injured worker’s wages and medical costs sit with workers compensation, which is compulsory for employees under your state scheme. The lost profit from having less crew capacity is a different problem. If you’re a small operator and you, as the owner, are also the key installer, look at personal accident and illness cover or key person insurance. Those policies are designed for losing a person rather than losing property.

Panel and inverter supply delays

This is the most common real-world interruption I see. A shipment is held up, a brand withdraws from the market, or a distributor runs short of stock heading into a busy period. Booked jobs slip and deposits sit there unconverted.

A standard BI policy almost never covers this on its own. Some insurers offer a suppliers’ premises extension (sometimes called customers’ and suppliers’ extension) that responds if a named or unnamed supplier’s premises suffers insured damage that disrupts your supply. That’s narrower than it sounds. It covers a fire at the distributor’s warehouse. It doesn’t cover a shipping delay, a factory running behind, or a supplier deciding to stop carrying a product.

The real protection against supply interruption is operational rather than insurance-based. I’ve written about why you shouldn’t build your business around a single source in why you shouldn’t rely on one solar supplier. Insurance can fill some of the gap, but it won’t replace a second distributor relationship.

Working out your indemnity period: a worked example

The indemnity period is the maximum length of time your BI cover will pay out after an event. It is not the waiting period (sometimes called the time excess), which is the stretch at the start that you carry yourself.

The common mistake is picking an indemnity period by thinking “how long would the repairs take?” Repairs are only part of it. The real question is how long until your revenue gets back to where it would have been. For an install business, that means rebuilding your pipeline as well as your shed.

Here is a simple way to work it out. All numbers below are illustrative, made up for this example, and not industry benchmarks.

Step 1: Time to restore premises. Say your yard and storage are badly damaged. Assessing the loss, getting a builder, approvals and repairs: estimate 4 months.

Step 2: Time to replace stock and equipment. Replacing damaged panels, inverters, racking, tools and a vehicle. Some of this overlaps with step 1, but lead times on specific brands can stretch out. Estimate 6 weeks, mostly overlapping, adding 2 weeks beyond the premises timeline.

Step 3: Time to win back the pipeline. This is the part everyone forgets. While you were down, your follow-up stopped, quotes went cold, and your sales rep may have taken a job somewhere else. Even after you can install again, it takes time to rebuild the booked queue to its old level. Estimate 3 months.

Step 4: Add a buffer. Builders run late, insurers take time to assess, and storms tend to hit plenty of other businesses competing for the same trades at once. Add 2 to 3 months.

Total: 4 months + 0.5 months + 3 months + 2.5 months = 10 months. Indemnity periods are usually sold in set steps, so in this example you’d talk to your broker about 12 months rather than the 3 or 6 months many small business packs default to.

Your answer could be shorter or longer. What matters is that you went through the pipeline recovery step deliberately instead of assuming you’d be back to full revenue the day the roof was fixed.

Gross profit basis versus revenue basis

Your broker will ask how you want your sum insured calculated. The two common approaches:

Using the same illustrative numbers: annual revenue of $1.5 million with $850,000 spent on hardware leaves roughly $650,000 in gross profit. That $650,000, adjusted for your indemnity period and expected growth, is the number to insure, not the $1.5 million. Get your accountant to check the definition against your actual accounts. Insurers’ definitions of gross profit don’t always match the line in your P&L.

How BI fits with the policies you already carry

Business interruption is one layer in your cover. Here’s how it fits with the others and where the gaps are.

Public liability covers third-party injury and property damage caused by your work. It’s treated as a scheme-level expectation for accredited installers, and the Clean Energy Council has even arranged a dedicated insurance offering for solar installers through broker Howden (Clean Energy Council & Howden, n.d.). I’ve covered the details in public liability insurance for CEC accredited installers. Public liability pays other people. It does nothing for your own lost income.

Workers compensation covers your employees’ wages and medical costs after a workplace injury, under your state scheme. It doesn’t cover your lost profit, and it generally doesn’t cover subbies who hold their own cover. You still need to check they actually do.

Equipment, tools and vehicle insurance pays to repair or replace the gear itself. If you insure your tools and stock on a separate tools policy instead of under a business pack property section, check that the separate policy can still act as the trigger for a BI claim. If it can’t, you may have a BI policy that never responds to the losses you’re most likely to have.

Professional indemnity and product liability come up in broader installer insurance guides (SurgePV, n.d.-a) and are worth discussing with your broker, particularly if you do design work or import your own hardware.

The gaps to watch for are:

  1. A key person off injured (no material damage, so no BI claim).
  2. Supply delays that don’t involve insured damage at a supplier’s premises.
  3. Damage to tools or stock insured under a policy that doesn’t trigger BI.
  4. Power or utility outages, which are often an optional extension.
  5. Denial of access, when you can’t get into your premises because of damage nearby. This is also often an extension.

BI is a cash flow decision, not just an insurance one

The best way I know to think about BI is to look at what your business costs to run when no money is coming in. Write down everything that keeps going out while jobs are stalled:

Then look at your working capital. Solar installers already have a structural cash gap between paying for stock, completing installs, and getting paid. Australian-focused cash flow guidance consistently points to the gap between profit on paper and cash in the bank as the thing that hurts installers (SurgePV, n.d.-b). If certificate income is part of your model, the timing of STC (Small-scale Technology Certificate) creation and sale adds to that gap. I’ve explained the mechanism in STCs are not a rebate and the cash flow effect in the STC lodgement cashflow gap.

If you could cover your fixed costs for the length of your indemnity period from cash reserves alone, BI matters less. Most small install businesses I’ve seen couldn’t last half that long. If that’s you, BI isn’t optional, whatever your broker or lender says.

Keep records that make a claim easy

A BI claim is a numbers argument. The insurer wants to see what you would have earned if the event hadn’t happened. That means booked jobs, quotes in progress, past conversion rates, job costing and seasonality. If those numbers are spread across a spreadsheet, a quoting tool, a calendar and three people’s heads, putting the claim together becomes a second job at the worst possible time.

That’s part of why I’m building CurrentFlow. It’s designed to keep scheduled jobs, crew availability and job costing in one place, so when something stalls the queue you’ll be able to see which jobs are affected and what revenue is at risk, and hand an assessor clean records. It isn’t live yet. Whatever tool you use, the discipline is what counts: if your job costing is accurate today, your claim is much easier to prove later.

Questions to ask your broker

Take this list into your next renewal conversation:

  1. What is my indemnity period, and does it cover the time to rebuild my job pipeline, not just my premises?
  2. Am I insured on a gross profit or revenue basis, and does your definition of gross profit match my accounts?
  3. What is my waiting period (time excess) before BI cover starts?
  4. Is increased cost of working included, and up to what limit?
  5. Do I have a suppliers’ premises extension? Does it cover unnamed suppliers and overseas suppliers?
  6. Are tools and stock insured in a way that will trigger my BI section?
  7. Are utility outage and denial of access covered or excluded?
  8. What are the main exclusions I should know about, specifically for a solar install business?
  9. Are claims preparation costs (accountant’s fees to prepare the claim) covered?

Premiums vary widely by insurer, location, turnover and claims history, so I won’t quote a figure. Get two or three quotes, and make sure each one is quoting the same indemnity period and basis so you can actually compare them.

References

Clean Energy Council & Howden. (n.d.). Solar installer insurance [PDF]. Clean Energy Council. https://assets.cleanenergycouncil.org.au/documents/Howden-Trades-CEC-Solar-Installers.pdf

CoverageAxis. (n.d.-a). Business interruption insurance for solar installation contractors. https://www.coverageaxis.com/business-interruption-for-solar-installation-contractors/

CoverageAxis. (n.d.-b). Business interruption legal requirements for solar installation contractors. https://www.coverageaxis.com/solar-installation-contractors-business-interruption-insurance-legal-requirements/

Insureon. (n.d.). Solar contractor insurance. https://www.insureon.com/installation-business-insurance/solar-contractors

SurgePV. (n.d.-a). Solar installer insurance requirements 2026. https://www.surgepv.com/blog/solar-installer-insurance-requirements

SurgePV. (n.d.-b). Solar installer cash flow management 2026: Working capital and financing. https://www.surgepv.com/blog/solar-installer-cash-flow-management

FAQ

Does business interruption insurance cover a solar installer if an employee is injured?

Usually not. Standard BI cover is triggered by insured material damage to property, and an injury isn’t property damage. Your employee’s wages and medical costs fall under your state workers compensation scheme. If losing a key person (including yourself) would stall the business, ask your broker about personal accident and illness or key person cover.

Will business interruption insurance pay out if my panel or inverter shipment is delayed?

A standard policy rarely does. Some insurers offer a suppliers’ premises extension that responds when a supplier’s premises suffers insured damage that disrupts your supply. Shipping delays, factory backlogs and a supplier dropping a product generally aren’t covered. The real protection is having more than one supply relationship.

How long should my indemnity period be?

Long enough for your revenue to get back to normal, not just for repairs to be finished. Add up the time to restore premises, replace stock and equipment, and rebuild your booked job pipeline, then add a buffer. For many install businesses that works out longer than the default period in a small business pack, so check yours.

Is business interruption insurance compulsory for solar installers in Australia?

It isn’t a general legal requirement the way workers compensation is for employers. Some head contractors, landlords or lenders may require it in their contracts. Whether you need it comes down to how long your business could cover its fixed costs with no income.

What’s the difference between gross profit and revenue basis?

Gross profit basis insures your turnover minus the costs that stop when trading stops, mainly hardware purchases. Revenue basis insures a share of total turnover. Hardware is a large part of each solar job’s cost, so gross profit basis is often the better fit, but get your accountant to check the policy definition against your accounts.