Latest articles by The Solar Nerd

In the six years I’ve owned my solar panels, there have been two times where I’ve looked up at my array and noticed something dark lodged underneath one of my panels. From the ground, I have a clear view of the space between my solar array and the roof. The gap is not wide, maybe 5 inches, but when I look at it from the ground, I normally expect to see clear sky along the full length of the array.

Low light conditions are a normal situation that solar panels are well designed to handle. Whether it’s cloudy, rainy, or simply early in the morning or late in the afternoon, you should expect your solar panels to continue to generate power. The power output of your solar panels will drop, but with most panels the decrease is fairly linear. That is, if the sunlight drops by half, with most panels the output will also drop by about half.

For the homeowner who planning to go solar, the most important decision that you will make is the solar installer you choose to work with. Because of this, I give plenty of tips on how to pick a solar installer company and a 20 point checklist to use when comparing solar quotes. These are invaluable tools to have when you’re looking at several quotes and aren’t sure how to choose between them.

While growing rapidly, renewable energy still constitutes a minority of the energy usage in the United States. Because of that, people are still learning how it works and whether it’s really better than fossil fuel energy sources. It’s easy on the internet to find articles suggesting that not only are wind and solar energy not environmentally friendly, but that they’re worse for the environment than fossil fuels. For example, Donald Trump claimed that the noise from wind turbines cause cancer (it doesn’t).

If you used The Solar Nerd calculator, you’ll have an estimate of how many solar panels you need to generate all of your electricity. But then the question is: will that many panels actually fit on your roof? You might know the square footage of your house, but that doesn’t tell you the area of roof that’s available to fit solar panels. What you want is a big rectangular area without any shade.

If you’re thinking about covering your house or garage with solar panels, or even building a solar pergola, you’ll want to know something about solar panel sizes. I’ll get to that, but first let’s clarify what we mean by size. It could mean a number of things: The physical dimensions of the panel, or The power output of the panel in watts and volts This article will focus on the first question, but also mention how dimensions and cell count affects power output.

A lot of the time, homeowners feel the need to hide their solar panels by mounting them on a rooftop away from the street. But with a little creativity, solar panels can be used as an attractive architectural design element. One of the underappreciated characteristics of solar panels is that they can be used to provide shade. With some smart design, you can make use of this by integrating solar panels into shading structures for your homes, such as pergolas, canopies, and carports.

Your roof keeps the rain off your head. It’s one of the most important components of your house, and an expensive thing to replace. When you get a new roof, you want to make sure that your investment is protected. But installing solar panels on a pitched roof involves drilling dozens of holes right into the roof. Sounds scary, doesn’t it? First of all, it’s recommended that you don’t install solar panels on a roof that has 10 or fewer years of life left in it.

If you’ve used our solar calculator or looked at the map of solar homes around you, you’ll know that going solar is pretty easy and increasingly common. As the price continues to drop, it becomes affordable for more people. But what if you want to go completely solar? What if you don’t want to use any fossil fuels at all in your home? Yes, it’s possible for solar panels to supply all of the electricity your home needs.

If you’re a homeowner who’s ever done a major home renovation, you’ll know that certain upgrades will mean an increase in property taxes. When you do a home renovation, in most municipalities this will involve getting permits for things like electrical, plumbing, or construction work. When property tax assessment time rolls around, the assessor’s office will typically review any permits for the property. If it looks like significant renovation work was done, your taxes could go up.