AI Estimate and Intake Assistant for Solar Installers in Dallas

Why a Dallas solar intake starts on the roof, not the bill

North Texas sits squarely in one of the country’s most active hail regions, and Dallas homeowners know the routine: a spring storm, a line of adjusters, and a street full of roofing crews. For a solar installer, that routine creates a sequencing problem. Mount an array on a shingle roof with only a few years left, or on one with an open insurance claim, and you may be pulling the panels off again sooner than anyone planned. The first job of an intake assistant in this market is to surface that risk before an estimator spends an afternoon on design.

So the assistant asks about the roof before it asks about kilowatt-hours. When was it last replaced? Was that after a hail claim? Is a claim open right now, or an adjuster visit scheduled? What is the material: standard composition shingle, impact-rated shingle, standing-seam metal, tile, or a flat membrane on a commercial building? Has anyone mentioned soft spots or leaks? Those answers go into a roof-status block at the top of the packet, together with ground-level photos of each roof plane.

What it withholds is a verdict. It will not tell a homeowner the roof is fine or that it needs replacing. It records what the owner knows, marks anything uncertain, and leaves your estimator to decide whether a roofing partner or a combined reroof-and-solar scope belongs in the conversation.

Oncor delivers the power, but the homeowner picks the plan

Dallas is in Texas’s competitive retail electricity market. Oncor owns the wires and handles interconnection, while the homeowner buys electricity from a retail electric provider of their choosing. That split matters for intake, because whether and how exported power is credited depends on the retail plan rather than the delivery utility, and plans change when contracts renew.

The assistant collects the pieces your estimator needs to make sense of it:

• The retail provider’s name and the plan name exactly as printed on the bill.
• The contract end date, if the owner knows it, because moving to a solar-friendly plan is often timed around renewal.
• The ESI ID, the meter identifier printed on competitive-market bills, which your team needs for paperwork.
• Twelve months of usage, either as uploaded bills or as an export from Smart Meter Texas or the provider’s online account.

Recommending a provider, ranking plans or estimating what exports will be worth are all outside its remit. It simply makes sure the estimator is not calling the homeowner back for a bill page they already had open.

Older bungalows, new builds and flat commercial roofs need different questions

Dallas mixes decades-old housing in established neighborhoods with newer construction toward the edges of the city and a very large commercial base: warehouses, offices, retail centers, churches and schools. One question set cannot serve all of them, so the assistant branches early by asking what kind of property it is and who controls the roof.

Older homes

Older houses often come with service panels that were never sized for an EV charger, a heat pump and a solar backfeed at the same time. The assistant asks for a sharp photo of the panel label and main breaker, notes any subpanels, and asks whether electrical work has been done recently. It also asks about detached garages or workshops, since a separate structure can host panels when the main roof is shaded or chopped up by dormers.

Commercial and multi-tenant properties

For commercial rooftops the conversation changes. The assistant identifies whether the contact is the owner, a property manager or a tenant, because a tenant usually cannot authorize rooftop work. It asks for roof type and age, whether the membrane is under warranty, rooftop equipment such as HVAC units, and whether structural drawings or recent roof reports exist. It requests interval data or twelve months of commercial bills and records operating hours, since a business that runs mostly in daylight uses solar very differently from one that runs overnight. These packets route to whoever handles commercial estimating, never into the residential queue.

A photo checklist that asks for retakes

Photos are the part of intake that fails most quietly. A blurry panel label or a roof shot taken straight into the sun is useless, and nobody notices until survey day. The assistant guides the homeowner through a short list: front and back of the house from the street or yard, each roof plane visible from the ground, the electric meter, the main panel with the door open and label legible, and any spot the owner has in mind for a battery or inverter, typically a garage wall.

Each upload gets a quick quality check. If the panel label is unreadable, the assistant asks for a closer shot with a flashlight instead of accepting it. If the owner cannot get a picture safely, the item is marked for the survey. Nobody is ever asked to climb onto the roof, remove the panel’s inner cover, or touch wiring.

Spring hail, summer peaks and winter freezes each bring a different lead

Solar inquiries in Dallas tend to follow the weather. Hail and wind season brings homeowners who are replacing a roof anyway and wonder whether this is the moment to add panels. Summer brings bill shock. Winter freezes, and the memory of February 2021, bring questions about batteries and backup.

The assistant shifts emphasis for each wave. For roof-replacement leads it asks for the roofer’s schedule and whether the owner wants the solar work coordinated with the new roof, then flags timing as the estimator’s first question. For bill-driven leads it concentrates on usage history and recent changes in the home. For backup-driven leads it asks which circuits matter during an outage and whether a generator is already on site. Tornado and wind damage get careful handling: if the owner mentions a damaged existing array or loose equipment on the roof, the assistant pauses intake, advises keeping clear, and escalates to your service team instead of logging it as a new sales lead.

The hand-off packet, and the lines it will not cross

When intake is complete, or the homeowner stops partway through, the assistant assembles a packet: property type, decision-maker, roof-status block, retail provider and plan, usage files, panel and meter photos, goals, access notes, and a short list of open questions. It creates or updates the record in your CRM, attaches the files, and can place a design call on your estimator’s calendar if you want that step automated. Your team can always read the full transcript.

The limits live in the configuration rather than being left to the model’s judgment. The assistant does not quote prices, forecast savings or payback, pick a retail plan, describe tax credit or incentive eligibility, or commit to installation dates. It does not collect Social Security numbers, bank details or credit information. If a customer reports sparking or a burning smell at the panel, it stops, directs them to an electrician or emergency services, and notifies your office.

Building it with EVOTECH

EVOTECH builds these assistants remotely from the Houston area for companies anywhere in the United States, backed by more than twenty years in business and a 5.0 rating on Google. For a Dallas solar installer, we start with a free consultation by phone or video covering how leads arrive, which fields your estimators re-ask most, and whether you take on commercial rooftops. A fixed-scope written quote follows. The build covers the question flow for each lane, photo checks, CRM and calendar connections, and testing against realistic sample conversations before launch.

Related reading: AI chatbots for contractors in Dallas, estimate and intake assistants across Texas, chatbots built for Texas solar companies and how our AI agents work.

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