AI Quote Request Chatbot for Solar Installers in Katy, TX

After Beryl, Katy solar requests start with backup, not savings

Hurricane Beryl came ashore in July 2024 and left much of the Houston region without power for days, in heat and humidity that made the outage hard to ride out. Winter Storm Uri had done something similar in February 2021, only in freezing weather. For solar installers who work the Katy area, the result is a change in the opening question. Many homeowners now start with can I keep the lights and the AC on next time? before they say anything about their bill.

That shift makes a first inquiry harder to price. A grid-tied system sized to offset usage is one design. A system with batteries that must carry a refrigerator, a gas furnace blower, a well pump or one of two air-conditioning units through an outage is another, with a different panel scope and a different discussion about where equipment will hang. Your designer cannot price either one from a web form that reads interested in solar.

A quote request chatbot has one narrow job: collect the scope a solar designer needs to produce a real proposal. It asks about usage, the roof, the electrical service and the backup goals, it gathers photos, and it hands everything to a person. It does not score the lead, book the site survey or answer general questions about your company; those are separate tools. This one fills in the file that sits in front of whoever writes the quote.

Usage, meter and retail plan: the numbers behind system size

Most Katy addresses sit in the competitive retail market, with CenterPoint Energy delivering power and the homeowner choosing a retail electric provider. That arrangement gives the chatbot a practical route to real consumption data. It explains, in plain steps, how to download a year of usage from the Smart Meter Texas portal, or it accepts photos of recent bills if the homeowner would rather do that. Either way, your designer starts from measured history instead of an estimate typed into a form.

The chatbot also asks which retail provider and plan appear on the bill, and whether that plan credits exported solar power. It records the answer as given. It does not recommend a plan, compare buyback offers or predict what a household will earn from exports, because those offers change and choosing among them is a conversation for your sales team.

New construction with no bill history

Growth around Katy continues in large master-planned communities, and plenty of solar inquiries come from owners who closed on a new house a few months ago. With no usage history to download, the chatbot switches to a short household profile: conditioned square footage, number of stories and air-conditioning systems, whether the water heater, range and dryer run on gas or electricity, pool equipment, electric vehicles owned or planned, and the move-in date. The packet is labeled as a profile, so the designer knows there is no metered year behind it.

Master-planned rooflines, HOA review and acreage ground mounts

In the subdivisions, roof questions are about planes and paperwork. The chatbot confirms the address so your designer can pull aerial imagery, then asks for a few photos from the yard: the rear roof, any south- or west-facing slopes, roof vents and the exterior wall where the meter and main panel sit. It asks for the roof material and roughly when the roof was installed or last replaced, since a roof near the end of its life changes what the proposal should include.

Most of these neighborhoods have a homeowners association, and many run an architectural review step before exterior equipment goes up. The chatbot asks whether the home is in an HOA, whether the owner has seen its solar guidelines and whether anything has been submitted. Texas law limits how far an association can go in banning rooftop panels, but approvals and placement preferences still shape the layout, and the chatbot leaves any reading of those rules to your team.

West and southwest of the city, out toward Brookshire and Fulshear, the questions change. On acreage and ranchette properties the chatbot asks whether a ground-mounted array is an option, how far the likely array spot is from the meter, what lies between the two, whether barns or shops have their own electrical service, and whether a well pump must run during an outage. It also asks who supplies power, because some rural properties are served by an electric cooperative with its own interconnection requirements, and the designer needs to know that before drawing anything.

Scoping batteries: essentials, whole-home and equipment placement

When a homeowner says they want backup, the chatbot turns that wish into a list a designer can size against. It offers a few plain choices, such as keeping the refrigerator, internet, lights and some outlets running, adding one air-conditioning system, or attempting the whole house, and then asks which appliances matter most. It requests a clear photo of the main panel with the door open, including the label that shows the main breaker rating and any subpanels, because battery and panel-upgrade scope depend on what is already there.

Many homes in the area added a standby generator after Beryl or Uri. The chatbot asks whether one is installed, whether it burns natural gas or propane, and whether it has its own transfer switch. That detail changes how a battery system would be integrated, and it is one of the facts most often missing from a solar inquiry.

Placement comes up too. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 flooded parts of the Katy area, and a homeowner who has seen water in the garage will have firm opinions about where an inverter or battery should go. The chatbot asks whether the property has ever taken on water and where the owner would prefer equipment to sit, then passes that along without suggesting a mounting height or saying anything about flood protection. Your designer and the applicable code settle that.

The question flow, step by step

The order follows how a solar designer thinks, and the chatbot skips steps that do not apply. A homeowner who wants a grid-tied system only never sees the backup questions, and someone who cannot find a bill can finish later through a saved link.

Katy stretches across Harris, Fort Bend and Waller counties, and an address can fall inside the City of Katy or in unincorporated county land, often within a municipal utility district. The chatbot does not try to work out who issues the permit. It captures the exact address so your permitting coordinator can.

What it will not tell a Katy homeowner

• No prices or payments. It never quotes a system cost, a price per watt or a monthly payment. Asked for one, it explains that a designer prepares the figure from the details just collected.
• No savings or production promises. It does not estimate bill reductions, export credits or payback.
• No tax or incentive advice. Incentive rules have shifted and eligibility depends on each household, so it points the homeowner to a tax professional and to your team.
• No storm-proof claims. It never says a system will keep a home powered through the next hurricane or that panels will survive a particular wind speed.
• No pressure. No countdown offers and no storm-season urgency language.

Some conversations should leave the quote flow early. If a homeowner mentions a burning smell at the panel, a damaged meter base after a storm or exposed wiring, the chatbot stops asking scope questions, tells them to contact the utility or an electrician right away, and flags the request for a person. Spanish is available throughout, since many Katy households prefer it, and your team receives the packet in English with the original answers attached.

From chat to proposal software, built remotely by EVOTECH

The finished request becomes a structured packet: usage file or household profile, roof and panel photos, the backup list, HOA status, the homeowner’s payment preference and anything they typed in their own words. We can deliver it by email, post it to a CRM such as HubSpot or Salesforce, or create a lead in a solar sales platform like Enerflo, so your designer can open the address in Aurora Solar or OpenSolar with the photos already attached. Exact integrations depend on the tools you run and what their connections allow, and we confirm that during scoping.

EVOTECH has been building web and software systems for more than 20 years and is rated 5.0 on Google. Our team works remotely from the Houston area, so discovery happens over a phone or video call. We write the conversation around how your company actually prices jobs, and you receive a fixed-scope written quote before any work begins. If you are also weighing a broader assistant for your website, our AI chatbots overview explains how the pieces differ, and the quote request chatbot guide for Texas contractors covers the same idea in other trades.

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