Latest articles by The Solar Nerd

Got some old appliances around your house? Perhaps a refrigerator that’s a couple decades old, or a rattling air conditioner that came with the house? Or maybe it’s winter and your just furnace died and you need a replacement NOW or you’ll freeze to death right in your home. These are big ticket items that make a big hit to your pocketbook, often at unexpected times when they suddenly stop working on you.

Solar panels that look like normal roofing shingles or tiles are getting more interest from homeowners ever since Tesla entered the market with their Solar Roof. While they weren’t the first company to develop this product category (broadly known as a building-integrated photovoltaics or BIPV), Tesla’s shingles look more convincingly like real slate or Mediterranean tiles than the BIPV products previously released from other companies. The social media popularity of the Tesla Solar Roof drew a lot of interest in solar from people who otherwise may have not considered it because they don’t like the look of normal solar panels.

Solar panels work by collecting sunlight and magically turning it into electricity to power your home. So does that mean when the sun goes down your electricity turns off and you can’t watch Game of Thrones? Actually, no. Read more to learn about how electricity continues to work seemlessly in a solar home, even when it’s dark, cloudy, or your panels are covered in snow. First, an explanation. Sunlight is made up of elementary particles called photons.

For many people who are thinking of adding solar panels to their house, knowing whether they will add or reduce the value of your house is a really important question. While it makes sense that any type of improvement to your home, including solar panels, should increase its value, there are a few caveats to be aware of when it comes to solar. First of all, when it comes to the question of whether or not solar will increase your home value, the answer in most cases is yes.

It really sounds too good to be true: companies offering to install solar panels on your home, and doing it for free. What? How is that possible? It’s not actually free, but it is possible to get solar panels installed on your home for no upfront cost. “Free” solar panels refers to two similar financing options: a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) and a solar lease. In both cases, the solar company owns the system they install on your home, and you buy the electricity it generates for a monthly fee.

Asking solar companies whether solar is good for you is a little like asking a real estate agent whether now is a good time to buy a house. If you’re a real estate agent, every time is a good time to buy a house. Similarly, a lot of the advice you’ll find about solar energy comes from people trying to sell you something. Honest advocacy can be a little hard to come by.

People often ask how many solar panels it takes to run a home with a particular square footage - a 2,000 foot or 2,500 house, for example. But square footage won’t answer that question because different homes of the same size can use wildly different amounts of electricity. The number of solar panels you need to run your home depends completely on how much electricity you use in a year.

Trying to find the best solar panels for your home can be an intimidating process. It’s not like buying a car, where you can go to the dealer and take a test drive, or taking a trip to the home center to peer inside refrigerators and pick out the one that fits best in your kitchen. One solar panel looks an awful lot like any other solar panel, and the manufacturers’ data sheets are long lists of acronyms and numbers.

Solar shingles or tiles are in a class of photovoltaics that are broadly known as building integrated photovoltaics (BIPV). They are photovoltaic modules that are made to mimic the look of normal roofing products, like asphalt shingles or slate tiles. If you’re interested in this topic, be sure to also read our article about conventional alternatives to solar shingles. There are attractive alternatives to solar shingles with conventional solar panel technology.

When you buy a home solar photovoltaic system, these are the factors that make up the price that you pay: Hardware costs, which includes panels, inverters, racking, and wiring; Labor; Soft costs, which includes system design, permitting, and customer acquisition costs (marketing and sales); Sales taxes; Incentives (federal, state, and local) These factors vary from state-to-state, and even cities in the same state can have different prices due to local incentives.