Latest articles by The Solar Nerd

One of the great things about the green energy revolution is that it has created a rapidly growing job sector. In 2019, more than 240,000 people were employed in the solar industry across the United States. Many of these are solar installation jobs, but also solar is one of the sectors where domestic manufacturing is growing. If you’re thinking of going solar in your home and want to support American manufacturing, you might be wondering which solar panels are made in the US.

If you live in a hot climate, it’s likely that air conditioning is your largest energy consumer. Photovoltaic panels make a lot of sense in these climates, because hot climates also have higher solar energy potential. After all, if the sun is making your house hot, why not also use the sun to generate electricity to keep it cool? But in addition to the active energy generation that solar panels provide, they can also provide another benefit by passively shading your building, possibly helping to reduce the temperature of your home and reducing the amount of time that your air conditioner needs to run.

When you’re shopping for solar panels, one of the things that manufacturers usually tout is efficiency. A high efficiency panel turns more sunlight into electricity than a lower efficiency panel, which means a solar homeowner can get more out of their limited rooftop space. So if efficiency is a good thing, that must mean that you should shop for the highest efficiency panels you can get, right? No, not always. If you’re in a situation where it’s important to maximize your power generation - like if you have a small roof - then efficiency could be very important to you.

If you have a home solar system, it won’t keep your house powered in a blackout unless you have a battery system. This is because solar inverters have a feature called anti-islanding. A solar inverter converts direct current (DC) power from solar panels into alternating current (AC) that your home and electric grid use. AC power has a frequency of 60 hz in North America. In normal operation, your solar inverter “listens” for power from the grid, and synchronizes its AC output to that of the grid.

Most houses have sloped roofs, but flat roofs aren’t uncommon, especially with Modernist designs. These tend to be more popular in milder climates that don’t need peaked roofs to deal with snow loads, such as California. If you’ve seen photos of solar panels on a typical house with a sloped roof, you may have noticed the racking system holding the panels in place. In the most common case where asphalt shingles are used, the racking is attached to the roof deck with bolts that are drilled through the shingles and attached to the deck underneath.

One of the most popular ways that homeowners use to get solar panels on their home is with a lease or power purchase agreement (PPA). By going this way, you can get solar installed on your home for little or no money down. But there are downsides to this approach, one of which is that it can be harder to sell your home with leased panels. This is because with either a PPA or lease the homeowner doesn’t own the solar equipment.

Tile roofs look great, don’t they? Not only do they really suit the architecture of the southwest where they are most popular, but they’re practical too. A well-installed clay or concrete tile roof can last 50 or even 100 years. But when it comes to installing solar panels, tile roofs represent the biggest challenge for solar installers. Not only can installing on a tile roof be more expensive, but there can be a higher risk of a poor installation causing damage to the waterproof integrity of the roof, leading to expensive repairs down the road.

With about 255,000 total customers, Sunrun is the largest solar installer in the United States. This means that if you’ve been shopping around for a solar installer, there’s a very good chance that you’ve come across Sunrun. When you go to sunrun.com, you’ll be given a breakdown of their 4 different solar payment plans. You’ll notice that they steer homeowners toward their leasing plan called Brightsave. While it’s possible to go the traditional route and have run Sunrun install a system that you purchase outright, their marketing is definitely slanted toward the no-money-down approach of leasing.

A net zero house is one that generates as much energy as it uses. Seems amazing, right? Even better: these homes look fantastic too. Think of all the things in your home that need power, from top to bottom: lights, cooking appliances, washer and dryer, heating and cooling, hot water, and lots of electronics. These things require a lot of electricity, but you probably have some appliances powered by fossil fuels: natural gas, heating oil, and propane are common heating fuels, depending on where you live.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has been doing planned blackouts through the wildfire season in 2019 as an emergency measure to avoid deadly wirefires like the Camp Fire of 2018 that killed 85 people and burned over 150,000 acres. Today’s planned blackout will be largest yet: over 800,000 customers will be affected. The Camp Fire of 2018 was caused by a faulty PG&E power transmission line in Butte County. A fallen PG&E power line sparked a fire on the morning of November 8, and within two days more than 6,700 structures had already been burned.