Editorial policy

These rules apply to every guide on voltgeber.com, whatever the topic or language. They describe what you can expect from a guide and what we hold ourselves to.

Independence

Voltgeber sells no products, refers no installers and takes no commissions. Manufacturers, retailers and utilities see no guide before publication and have no say in what we cover, what we write or how we rate anything. Press releases and manufacturer specifications are treated as sources with an interest of their own: we name them as such and never base a legal or numerical claim on them alone.

Sources

Every figure, deadline and legal statement has a source, listed at the end of the guide with the date we accessed it. Primary sources come first: laws and bills, regulators, utilities, standards bodies. Consumer organizations, universities and trade associations come second, press and manufacturers third. What we cannot source, we do not write, or we label it as an assessment. Prices and market figures carry the month in which we observed them.

Verification

Drafting and verification are separate steps. In the second step every guide is compared sentence by sentence with the sources it cites; unsupported statements are removed or marked as uncertain. A guide that has not yet completed this pass carries a visible “being verified” notice.

Keeping guides current

Rules change, incentives expire, prices move. Every guide shows the date of its last substantive change and the date of its last verification. Guides on laws and registration are re-checked at least every six months, incentives every three, costs every six, technical explainers yearly. When a law changes, the affected guides are moved to the front of the queue. A year in a title describes the state of the guide; the guide’s address never changes.

Corrections

We correct errors in the guide itself and update its date. For substantive corrections we add a note in the text. Guides that no longer apply are rewritten or marked, not quietly deleted. The editorial team reads and answers every report sent to kontakt@voltgeber.com.

Advertising

Voltgeber is funded by ads delivered by an ad network. Ads are labeled “Advertisement” and kept clearly apart from editorial content; they never appear as part of a guide. Advertisers are not told in advance which topics we are working on and cannot buy placement in specific guides. Voltgeber uses no affiliate links and publishes no paid content. Should any of this change, we will say so on this page and on the guide concerned.

What our guides are not

Our guides are general information. They do not replace advice from a lawyer, a tax professional or a licensed electrician, nor a ruling from your utility about your own connection. Where the answer depends on your individual case, we say so and name the authority to ask.

Language

We write so that a guide can be understood without prior knowledge: short sentences, explained terms, figures with units and dates, no sales language. When something is unclear or disputed, we say that instead of smoothing it over.