MCS Certified Installers Scraper

Scrape certified installer data from mcscertified.com/find-an-installer/ — the official UK registry of MCS (Microgeneration Certification Scheme) certified installers. This actor extracts detailed contact information, certification details, technology specializations, and geographic coverage for thousands of renewable energy installers across the United Kingdom.

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Use Cases

• Solar PV Installer Lists — Build targeted lead lists of Solar PV certified installers by region
• Heat Pump Market Research — Analyze the distribution of Air Source & Ground Source Heat Pump installers across the UK
• Competitive Analysis — Identify certified installers in your target postcodes and service areas
• Trade Body Auditing — Verify certification status, certification bodies, and technology coverage
• Green Energy Directories — Generate clean structured data for renewable energy directories and comparison tools
• Supply Chain Development — Find installation partners by technology type (battery storage, biomass, solar thermal, wind turbine, etc.)

Features

• Technology Filtering — Filter by 10+ renewable technology types (server-side, reduces API response)
• Regional Filtering — Filter by UK nation (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) with England subregion support (client-side filtering)
• All Contact Data — Email, telephone, website, full address breakdown (line 1/2/3, county, postcode, country)
• Certification Info — Certification number, certification body, boiler upgrade scheme eligibility
• Geographic Coordinates — Latitude and longitude for each installer
• Comprehensive Coverage — Scrapes all 5,500+ certified installers in the MCS database
• Configurable Pagination — Set a page limit for small test runs or scrape the complete dataset
• Clean Output — Structured JSON in Apify dataset with consistent field naming

Input Options

Field	Type	Description
technologies	Multi-select	Filter by renewable technology types
regions	Multi-select	Filter by UK nations (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland)
englandSubregions	Multi-select	Sub-regions within England (only applies when England is selected)
maxPages	Integer	Maximum pages to scrape (0 = all pages, ~185 pages for full dataset)

Available Technology Filters

Value	Label
air-source-heat-pump	Air Source Heat Pump
battery-storage	Battery Storage
biomass	Biomass
exhaust-air-heat-pump	Exhaust Air Heat Pump
ground-water-source-heat-pump	Ground/Water Source Heat Pump
micro-chp	Micro CHP
small-wind-turbine	Small Wind Turbine
solar-assisted-heat-pump	Solar Assisted Heat Pump
solar-heating	Solar Heating
solar-pv	Solar PV

Available Region Filters

Value	Label	Subregions
england	England	Eastern, East Midlands, London, North East, North West, South East, South West, West Midlands, Yorkshire & Humberside
scotland	Scotland	—
wales	Wales	—
northern-ireland	Northern Ireland	—

Output Fields

Each installer record in the dataset includes:

Field	Description
name	Installer company name
installerId	Unique MCS installer ID
slug	URL-friendly name slug
url	Full profile URL on mcscertified.com
email	Contact email address
telephone	Contact phone number
website	Company website URL
address	Full address (combined)
addressLine1	Address line 1
addressLine2	Address line 2
addressLine3	Address line 3
county	County
postcode	Postcode
country	Country
certificationNumber	MCS certification number
certificationBody	Certifying body
boilerUpgradeScheme	Boiler Upgrade Scheme eligibility (boolean)
technologies	Array of renewable technology labels
regions	Array of UK region labels
lat	Latitude coordinate
lng	Longitude coordinate
distance	Distance from search centre point
technologySubType	Technology sub-type
scrapedAt	ISO timestamp of when the record was scraped

How It Works

This actor communicates directly with the WordPress AJAX API that powers the mcscertified.com installer search. It does NOT use a headless browser:

1. Nonce Extraction — Fetches the page HTML to extract the WordPress AJAX nonce
2. API Queries — Sends structured GET requests to admin-ajax.php?action=filter_installers
3. Server-Side Technology Filtering — Technologies like Solar PV, Heat Pumps are filtered server-side by the API
4. Client-Side Region Filtering — Region filtering is applied post-query using boolean flags in the API response
5. Dataset Output — Each validated record is pushed to the Apify dataset

No browser, no proxies, no heavy dependencies. This makes the actor fast (~1 second per page), lightweight (~60MB container), and highly reliable.

Quick Start

1. Open the actor in Apify Console: mcscertified-com-installer-scraper
2. Click Start with default settings to scrape all installers
3. Or configure filters to narrow your results
4. Export results as JSON, CSV, XML, or Excel

API Example

const { ApifyClient } = require('apify-client');

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: 'YOUR_API_TOKEN' });

const run = await client.actor('morkerr/mcscertified-com-installer-scraper').call({
    technologies: ['solar-pv'],
    regions: ['scotland'],
    maxPages: 10,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(`Extracted ${items.length} installers`);

Performance

• Full scrape (all 5,532 installers, 185 pages): ~3-4 minutes
• Per page: ~1 second
• Container size: ~60MB (Node.js 20, no browser dependencies)
• Memory usage: ~80MB

Limitations

• Region filtering is applied client-side because the MCS API does not support server-side region filtering
• The MCS AJAX nonce has a 12-24 hour lifetime; the actor extracts a fresh nonce on each run
• The API returns a maximum of 30 results per page

Changelog

1.0.0

• Initial release
• AJAX API-based scraping (no browser)
• Technology and region filtering
• Complete installer data extraction

Support

Report issues or request features via GitHub Issues.

Disclaimer

This actor scrapes publicly available data from mcscertified.com. Users are responsible for complying with the website's terms of service and applicable data protection regulations when using scraped data.