In a solar street light tender, the evaluation table usually has rows for power, lumens, battery capacity and warranty. Increasingly, it has another row: spare parts and after-sales support. That row is where otherwise equal bids separate.

Why It Became a Scoring Item

Municipalities that installed solar lighting five years ago are now replacing batteries and drivers. They discovered that a two-year warranty does not help in year four, and that a supplier who has moved on to a new model cannot supply the old driver. The lesson went into the next tender.

What a Good Requirement Looks Like

1. Module-level replaceability. Driver, sensor and battery replaceable without removing the head.
2. Documented part numbers. A bill of materials that matches the delivered units.
3. Availability commitment. Written confirmation of stock or lead time for the contract period.
4. Service kit. A recommended spare-parts ratio per hundred units, priced in the bid.
5. Response time. A defined technical response window, not a general promise.

The Supplier Side

Supporting spares is a business decision, not a warehouse accident. It requires standardising components across models, forecasting demand for old products, and resisting the temptation to change a driver every year for a marginal cost saving.

Suppliers who do this win repeat tenders, because the buyer’s maintenance team becomes their advocate. Suppliers who do not win the first order and lose the next five years of service revenue.

“A lamp is a five-year relationship. The quotation is just the first date." — Procurement consultant, municipal projects

A Note on Price

Spare parts are not free, and pretending otherwise is how suppliers win bids they cannot service. The honest approach is to price a service kit openly and show the buyer what it replaces over five years. When the kit is visible, the comparison shifts from unit price to avoided downtime, which is the number the maintenance team actually cares about.

The Buyer’s Shortcut

Before awarding, ask for one part number that was shipped three years ago and confirm it can still be supplied. Then ask for the price of that part today and whether it has changed model since. The answer reveals more about the supplier than the entire warranty section, because it shows whether the service commitment survives product refreshes.