Latest articles by The Solar Nerd

If you’re a homeowner in one of the top states for home solar such as California, New Mexico, or Arizona, there’s a pretty good chance that you’ve had a salesperson from Vivint Solar come knocking on your door. Operating in 21 states and with gross revenues in 2018 of $760 million, Vivint Solar is one of the largest solar installers in the nation. Like its larger competitor SunRun, Vivint Solar sells home solar systems under a type of contract known as a power purchase agreement (PPA).

One of the fundamental concepts of home solar is grid interconnection - otherwise known as connecting to the grid. What does this mean? First, let’s define exactly what “grid” means. When talking about home solar, the grid refers to the power grid, also known as the electric grid. It is the collection of machinery and wires that generates electricity and brings it to your home. There are two parts to the grid: generation, which consists of a variety of power plants such as coal plants, gas turbines, nuclear power plants, wind turbines, hydroelectric dams, and solar panels.

A big part of the cost of a home solar installation is in the labor. An installation requires a multiple person crew, and a bucket truck to move equipment up to the roof. Costs can vary quite a bit from installer to installer, but according to a government study of the solar industry, installation labor on average is 11% of the total cost of a residential solar system. This means that if the gross cost of your system was $20,000, the cost of labor for the day or two it takes to install the panels will be in the ballpark of $2,200.

If you frequently experience the frustration of a smartphone that’s running out of juice and having nowhere to charge it, you should consider a portable solar battery charger. This article includes links to Amazon.com, and we may earn a small commission when you purchase one of the products listed on this page. Our reviews are independent, and none of the companies have paid to be featured. These portable devices range in sizes no larger to a smartphone case, to larger folding chargers with multiple panels that can supply enough power to charge a tablet or even a laptop.

If you’re thinking of buying a house that already has solar panels installed, there are some questions you’ll need to run through with the buyer before you sign the contract. But first, if you’ve never thought about solar panels until you came across them in your home search, it’d be a good idea to do a little background reading first. Home solar panels have become wildly popular, with more than 2 millions solar installations now across the United State.

If you’re a little bit handy, you might think that installing your own solar panels isn’t that hard. This might especially be true if you have some electrical skills, because the wiring may be the most technical part of a solar installation. And even though the price of solar panels continues to drop, a big part of the cost of a home solar system isn’t hardware, but what are called soft costs.

Hanwha is a South Korea-based company that purchased the German solar company Q Cells, forming Hanwha Q CELLS in 2015. Since then, Hanwha has grown to be one of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the world. Their product lineup consists of premium solar panels that are popular in the US market. In this article, we’ll take a close look at the company and its offerings. Hanwha company overview Headquarters Seoul, South Korea Manufacturing Dalton, Georgia; China, Malaysia, South Korea Other locations Germany (R&D) Number of employees 8,500 Ticker symbol HQCL New US-based Hanwha factory On September 19, 2019 the company opened its first US-based factory in Dalton, Georgia, where it will manufacture its Q CELLS solar modules.

If you want to get the maximum performance out of solar panels, it’s important that they have full sun for as much of the day as possible. To see the effect of shade on your solar panels, try The Solar Nerd calculator with different values for shading, from none to partial and major shading. You can quickly see that shading has a seriously detrimental effect on how much electricity a solar array will generate.

For people living in cities, rooftop solar - literally putting solar panels on top of your house - is by far the most popular choice when going solar. For many people, it’s the only option, because city lots are often too small to consider anything else. But for people living on larger suburban lots or in the country, ground mounted solar can be an option and, in fact, is often the better way to go.

If you have Enphase microinverters, you will probably have a device called the Envoy. This is the device that reports your solar production data and makes it available to the website and smartphone app. Your Envoy is connected to the internet with a couple different possible methods. When it loses its connection for any reason, your solar production data in the app will be frozen at the last time that the Envoy was able to connect.