Latest articles by The Solar Nerd

In the early days of solar energy - decades ago - people who installed solar panels on their homes tended to be hardcore enthusiasts and hackers who were doing it for environmental reasons above all else. Today, solar technology has gone mainstream. While most people who install solar panels on their houses these days do care about the environment, other concerns such as finances and aesthetics also are a big consideration.

The most visible part of a home solar system is the panels. Around 95% of homeowners choose a roof-mounted (rather than ground-mounted) system, so how the panels are attached to the roof is a key detail of the installation. Solar panels are attached to a roof using a mounting system. The most common type is a rail-based system, which uses aluminum rails as the structure onto which the panels and other components, such as wiring and inverter components, are attached.

A salesperson knocks on your door and tells you that you can get solar panels installed on your home for free. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? It is. When a solar company pitches you on “free” solar panels for your home, they are referring to a solar lease or power purchase agreement (PPA) that requires no payment upfront. The company will install the solar array on your home, and you get to use the solar electricity it generates.

As more people realize their disadvantages, solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) are shrinking in popularity, dropping from a high of 59% of the market in 2012 to only 37% in 2019. That’s still a sizeable chunk of the market, and some people regret signing these contracts. With 20 year contracts being common, solar leases can tie you up for a very long time. Many consumers sign them without doing adequate research, especially after being solicited by door-to-door or kiosk salespeople.

Here’s a super quick crash course on the electric grid: When you plug in a kettle or turn on your air conditioner, you add a little bit of load to the electric grid. This causes the voltage on the grid to drop by a tiny amount. If enough people do that at the same time, the operators of the grid respond by asking power plants to generate more power. This also works the other way: if power plants are cranking out more electricity than customers are using, power plants are asked to dial their power output down, or even shut off completely.

Solar leases and power purchase agreements (PPAs) are similar ways of getting “free” solar panels with no money down. They’re marketed heavily by big installers like Sunrun, Sunnova and Momentum. Leases and PPAs offer a compelling pitch to consumers: with no upfront cost, you can get solar power for your home. You pay a certain amount of money every month, but how you are billed is where leases and PPAs differ.

A revision to net metering rules in California that was working its way through the California Legislature failed to get enough votes on June 2 to move forward, killing the proposal for now. The proposal, Assembly Bill 1139, was authored by state assembly member Lorena Gonzalez and contained several controversial changes to California’s current net metering rules for solar homeowners, most notably: Substantially reducing the credit paid for selling excess solar electricity back to the utility.

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) is a burst of electromagnetic energy. Like any magnetic field it’s invisible, but if it’s powerful enough it can knock out electronics or even the power grid. This happens because a moving magnetic field can generate an electrical current in a conductive wire. In fact, this is how a generator works. If you take a really big moving magnetic field and apply it to a really big wire - such as the transmission wires of the electrical grid - the resulting surge of electricity could be large enough to cause widespread damage to power plants, electrical substations, and other major infrastructure.

Everyone likes a good deal, but not everybody knows how to get one. This is especially true of home solar which, for most people, is unfamiliar territory. Fortunately, the way to find a good deal on a home solar installation isn’t a lot different from any other major home renovation project. Read on for some simple tips you can follow before speaking to your local solar installer. Tip 1: Know which incentives are available to you One of the most important things to know as someone shopping for quotes on a home solar installation is the rebates available to you, especially tax incentives.

When it comes to buying solar panels for your home, the first thing that manufacturers usually tout is the panel’s efficiency. Solar panel efficiency refers to the amount of sunlight hitting the panel that gets converted into electricity. The intensity of sunlight can be expressed in watts - the same unit used to measure electrical power. For example, if 1,000 watts of sunlight is shining on your solar panel and it generate 200 watts of electricity, the panel is 20% efficient.