1. Confirm that your paperwork is in order. Solar rebate applications should have been submitted either by your installer or under their supervision some time ago, but make sure you consult with them and with your accountant to make sure you’re prepped to take advantage of the federal investment tax credit. The ITC is equal to 30 percent of the total cost of a solar installation. From DSIRE:
   • “Expenditures include labor costs for onsite preparation, assembly or original system installation, and for piping or wiring to interconnect a system to the home. If the federal tax credit exceeds tax liability, the excess amount may be carried forward to the succeeding taxable year [until at least 2016].”
2. Monitor system performance from month one. Remember how we told you to become intimately familiar with your energy use patterns and electric bill before even getting a quote? This is where, once again, that comes in handy. Your solar quote should have included not just a yearly, but a monthly projection of energy output from your solar panels. Your electric bill should be fairly predictable.
   • In the first few months after installation, numbers (projection/savings) will be higher than subsequent months, as the whole system kind of “burns off” its factory shine and settles into long-term productivity mode. This will be built into your quote as well.
   • In solar, you hear the word “average” a lot. Keep in mind that fluctuations in weather may result in a different usage profile for any given month, but on a yearly basis, it should all average out.
3. Deal with drastic differences in output ASAP. If in any given month your solar panels’ electric production–as reflected by a higher electric bill–seems drastically different, first think about how cloudy or rainy or snowy it’s been. Worst weather in 20 years? Your panels are probably fine. If it’s been sunny as can be, peek up on the roof if you’re able to for any obstructions (fallen tree branches, squirrel nests, etc.). Next, give your installer a call for assistance with troubleshooting. DO NOT let it slide. If conduit has been compromised by said squirrels, or by some flaw in the installation–let’s hope not, and remember, work only with qualified installers–it may be a safety issue as well as a money issue.
4. Manage your participation in any REC trading programs available to you. Renewable Energy Credits represent the market value of the clean energy your system is producing. REC trading programs buy and sell these credits to utility companies who are striving to meet clean energy mandates set out by their state governments. If your state had an official REC program in place when you installed your solar panels, your installer should have not only helped you enroll, but most likely started out managing the sale of your RECs for you. But more and more states are eyeing REC programs as a lower-cost way to boost solar energy capacity, and if one pops up near you, it’s possible you may be eligible to participate. Not all programs allow the enrollment of older systems (like Massachusetts’s), but you never know. RECs can represent a valuable revenue stream.
   • Follow this blog to stay updated on solar incentive programs across the country.
5. Enjoy your clean energy and low electric bills for the next 30+ years. Most solar panels are warrantied for 25-30 years these days. You will need to replace your inverter around year 12-15, the cost of which your installer should have built into your financial projections (though you won’t pay for the replacement inverter until you need it; they’re a few thousand bucks right now, though who knows how much cheaper and better they may have become by 2030…). Solar panel warranties generally coverage output of at least 80 percent of the panels’ rated capacity over time. After the warranty expires, you may still be seeing outputs of 70 percent or more of rated capacity for years and years and years to come.

In other words: congratulations. Your investment in solar energy has supported national as well as individual energy independence, a market shift towards lower-carbon energy production, and a healthier environment. Plus, you’ve saved oodles of money and impressed your friends and family.

Yeah, we know. Solar is kind of awesome.

Five Things To Do After You Get Solar

1. Get competitive bids. This is a big investment. Be smart about it: comparing quotes may reveal differences not only among the companies in question, but in the total electrical output and hence, the return on your investment. How do you find installers?
   • You can get referrals from friends and neighbors who’ve gone solar and had a good experience with their contractor. Referrals always offer you the best chance of success. Remember you still want multiple quotes, though.
   • You can get referrals through a third-party service that vets installers for you. Full disclosure here: GetSolar is one of these services–you can start a request for referrals here–but we’ve got plenty of company in the field. All services are not created equal, so as always, be a conscious consumer. Services like ours, by the way, aren’t adding cost to your quote–all solar companies have marketing budgets to find customers, and whatever channels they use (third party services, media ads, flier campaigns, etc), their monthly budget remains the same. Using a third party service can also give you access to bennies like great informational resources and personal consultations, depending on the company.
   • You can do a web/phonebook search for solar installers near you and contact the companies directly. This can actually be harder than it sounds, since many more experienced, larger companies have multiple offices and service regions but only one HQ–and the HQ’s address will be the one that pops up on your search, and it may be halfway across the state or in another state entirely. Do your homework on cold-called installers: find out how many installations they’ve done, check their status with the Better Business Bureau, and see if they’ll let you talk to former customers for feedback.
2. Evaluate bid cost. As with any contract bid, lowest is not always best. Plus, you’re looking at solar in a time of economically dire straits. Many solar installers work on a much smaller profit margin than other contractors: 10-15 percent of the cost of a bid might be labor, and workers and overhead have to get covered out of that before the company realizes profit. How do you think they’re doing in a recession? In some cases, not too well. Which means they can do two things to lower quotes in the hopes of attracting your business: (a) cut corners (bad for you); (b) cut profits (bad for them). If you get one quote significantly lower than the others, try to find out why. Sometimes it’s a simple explanation, like they just got a super good deal on a large order of solar panels and are passing the savings on to you.
3. Evaluate bids’ electrical output and savings projections. Are your installers recommending differently sized systems? If so, why? If not, are they offering equal gains at equal cost? If you’re looking at three bids and two of them recommend you get a 4.2 kw sytem and one recommends a 4.8 kw, but at the same cost, dig a little deeper. Some things are too good to be true—and sometimes, simple things like lingo might be to blame. Maybe the 4.8 kw quote was actually in watts DC and not watts AC, and you missed that tiny (to you) detail first time around in your bid review.
4. Sign your contract. Once you’ve selected a solar installer, they’ll start engineering your system and pushing the vast amounts of paperwork around. You may have some financial paperwork yourself to deal with, but basically, this is sit back and relax time for you.
5. Watch your solar panels get installed. And really, watch them: don’t hover, don’t assume you know more than your installer does about how to wire a circuit or how to get a 40 lb solar panel up on the roof–but be aware, be proactive, and be involved. You’ve hired a professional to do a job that needs considerable expertis but it’s on your dime, and you not only have the right to know how the job is going, you have a certain responsibility as well.

After this, you can just watch the zeros drop off your electric bill. Oh, and brag to dinner party guests about the sexy 225-watt monocrystalline solar panels now producing 18 kWh of electricity every day for you—because now you know what that means. Nicely done.

Five Things To Do When You Get Solar

(1) Reduce your energy consumption. Renewable energy is awesome, but it’s expensive. Reducing your consumption means any solar energy you produce on-site will offset more of your total usage. Use less, save more. Small changes to your habits can make big differences.

(2) Make your house more energy efficient. This is the other side of the reduction coin. A poorly insulated home is just leaking away your energy dollars. A responsible solar installer will almost always recommend energy efficiency improvements be made before continuing on with solar. Some states codify this best practice in legislation; for instance, New Jersey offers a slightly higher solar rebate ($1.75/watt vs. $1.55/watt) for applicants who have a professional home energy audit performed before solar is installed.

(3) Read your electric bill–no, no, seriously READ IT. Not many people know how much they pay per kilowatt-hour for electricity, let alone the chunk of the bill that’s made up of supply and delivery charges. Find out what rate structure you’re on with your utility–it might affect your energy use habits. For instance, if you’re on a time of use (TOU) rate with your utility, you may start doing your laundry and dishes at night when energy is cheaper, and keeping the AC down during the middle of the day when energy is at its most expensive. Becoming familiar with your own energy use patterns makes you a more conscious, informed, and effective solar homeowner. For more help understanding the mysterious hieroglyphics on your bill, refer to our guide to understanding your electric bill.

(4) Assess your site and roof. This is where some professional assistance can come in handy, but you can and should get your facts in order first. Most important: does your roof receive full sun between the hours of 9am and 3pm? This is the recommended window for full sun exposure to get the most out of your solar panels. Only slightly less important: does your roof offer a southern exposure for installation? Some states require this as a prerequisite for solar rebates, but in any event it’s preferable. A south-facing roof ensures maximum average sun exposure throughout the year.

Related reading:

• What Makes a Roof ‘Good’ for Solar?
• How Much Roof Space Do I Need for Solar?

(5) Assess your finances. Okay, you’ve jumped through the other hoops. Now jump through this one. Careful, it’s on FIRE! Making sure you’re financially well-positioned for solar is key. If you live in a competitive state like New Jersey, California, Pennsylvania or Arizona, you’ll see excellent returns on an investment that will pay for itself in under 10 years (in some cases, as few as two or three). Still, solar requires the ability to either pay for or finance a large out of pocket sum; many excellent programs exist to make this as easy, approachable, and painless as possible, but if your credit boat would be sunk by an additional $15,000 of debt–well, rethink your strategy and come back to solar later. It’ll be here.

If after reading the five points above you think you’re ready to take the solar plunge — or if you’ve just got questions — give us a call! 1 (800) 265-3646.

Five Things To Do Before You Get Solar

Before the overview, a quick vocab lesson:  A solar cell is the actual, wafer-thin semiconductor that produces electricity. A solar module is multiple solar cells connected to one another. A solar panel is one or more solar modules sealed up in a single object (frame) and used as part of a solar array. A solar array is the whole shebang mentioned above: the solar panels plus all the ancillary equipment necessary to not only produce electricity from sunlight, but to channel and use it.

Crystalline Solar

Crystalline solar panels have been around, in varying stages of efficiency and attractiveness, for decades. They’re on space stations and satellites–they’re reliable and they last for ages. The semicondutor–the element responsible for the actual electric generation–is a thin sheet of crystalline silicon. There are two kinds of crystalline solar cells, which differ in how they’re manufactured, their efficiency levels, and ultimately, their end cost to the consumer.

• Monocrystalline solar cells: Literally of one crystal, these cells are wafers sliced off one large, organically grown cylindrical silicon crystal. With their nearly perfect crystalline structure, these wafers are superb conductors of electricity. Current monocrystalline solar panels on the market can turn more than 15 percent of the sunlight that hits their surface into electricity.
  • The crystal growth and extrusion process is time- and labor-intensive, and there is great materials loss involved in cutting the circular crystal wafers into usable octagonal solar cells, which is why solar modules made with these cells are the most expensive ones on the market.
  • They are only cost-effective in some scenarios because their high efficiency means they produce more power over time than other, cheaper modules. Efficiency can go as high as 22 percent on the market, and just over 25 percent in the lab.
  • You can tell when you’re looking at a monocrystalline solar module because you’ll see little white diamonds (or black, with some manufacturers) formed by the empty space between the edges of the octagonal cells.

• Polycrystalline solar cells: These solar cells are cut from multicrystalline silicon cast in large shallow trays. There’s a lot less labor, cutting, and waste involved with polycrystalline, so they’re cheaper than their mono brethren. However, the casting process produces a less perfect crystalline structure, which means these cells don’t transmit energy as efficiently. These are very standard solar modules: good efficiency, decent price.
  • Polycrystalline solar modules have a uniform appearance. Their color is a prettily mottled blue-black. Efficiency is usually more like 12-15 percent. These are the go-to type of solar panel for residential installations in particular, where the slight step down from monocrystalline efficiency is more than offset by the cost savings. You’ll hear monocrystalline solar panels referred to as “the best”; this isn’t necessarily true. Mono- and poly-cells simply have different niches.

Amorphous or Thin-Film Solar

This is the technology that’s set the industry abuzz with news of ultra-cheap solar: $1/watt or less. For the record, they’re talking about manufactured costs here–by no means does that number reflect what you could expect to pay as a consumer. Super cheap solar is indeed nothing more than a rumor. It’s simply fact: this is high technology. High technology costs money. Federal, state, and utility solar incentives, however, can combine to lower the net cost of solar energy systems drastically, and turn a big ticket item into one excellent investment.

But yes, it’s exciting that there is a cheaper solar technology afoot, and it has some great applications. Thin film can be made of different materials, sometimes silicon based and sometimes using chemical polymers as the semiconductor.  Thin film drawbacks? Very low efficiency compared to crystalline, with rates typically in the 8-9 percent range; and dubious life expectancy. Crystalline solar panels are warrantied for 25-30 years, and history has proven that they can and will produce energy long after that range. Thin-film has no such tried and true promise of efficacy, which means it can be difficult to predict its returns over a longer period. It’s also easier to damage. Crystalline solar modules, encased in glass and weather-sealed, are built to tough out the elements and have been proven to do so successfully. Additionally, thin film only works for solar installation sites where space is no object and angle no concern–either a perfectly tilted roof (best angle for solar is equal to the latitude of the install site) or a perfectly flat one.

So in sum:

Monocrystalline: Most efficient; most expensive; attractive octagonal design; especially good for solar installations where space is at a premium.

Polycrystalline: Efficient; moderately priced; classic “solar panel” coloration and design; best all-around choice.

Thin film: Inefficient; cheap; best for commercial installations where higher quantity can compensate for lower quality.

I hope this helps make sense of the technologies out there. If you have any questions or just want to geek out with us about cool solar technologies–like multijunction solar cells, which are a phenomenon unto themselves but pretty rare, so not included here– just post your comments below.

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