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Frequently Asked Questions
Here are a few super common questions and answers for your information.
Absolutely! Many home and business owners chose to go solar today – leveraging the immediate cost competitiveness of solar to start saving money on their electric bills – and install batteries in the future, once hardware costs fall. There is nothing that prevents you from adding battery storage to an existing solar array. This arrangement is called a “storage retrofit.” There are a few important hardware considerations (including whether to AC- or DC-couple the system, and the most appropriate battery inverter for the desired coupling configuration) and financing considerations (federal tax credit eligibility) for storage retrofits.
The size of your optimal solar array will be influenced by many variables. Before analyzing those variables, you should understand how solar is sized and measured. The electrical capacity of solar panels is measured in watts (W). The typical solar panel is rated at 250-300 W. To get the total power (in watts) of your solar array, add together the wattages of each panel. Let’s say you had 10 300 W panels installed. The total wattage of your system would equal 3,000 W. 1,000 W is equal to 1 kilowatt (kW), so another way to describe the size of that system would be 3 kW. The average size of a solar array is 5 kW.
Solar is a simple, minimum-maintenance technology. Unlike other energy technologies, solar PV contains no moving parts. This means it’s not likely your equipment will fail. You should not have to replace your panels at all during their lifetime. Wiring is the part of solar PV that most commonly requires maintenance because squirrels and other animals may tamper with it. Even in those cases, damage tends to be minimal. Solar panels do not need to be washed, as rain and snow naturally clean them. We do not recommend climbing up to your panels to wash them.