Category: Consumer Guide

You’ve decided to get serious about going solar for your home or business. Great! Here’s a few ways you can get started. Basic research There’s a lot of information on the internet. Three resources we like: State of California: California Solar Consumer Protection Guide, published by the state energy regulator (CPUC), includes a comprehensive checklist of questions to ask to …

Make sure your solar panels are doing their job with some preventative monitoring. We asked solar industry veteran Al Rich of ACR Solar for some tips. Here’s what we learned: 1. Why is it important to learn how to monitor your own system? Even though many solar installers have a monitoring service, they usually can only look for “red flags” …

This summer, give your panels a rinse. It doesn’t have to be hard, and can improve your system performance. Get the quick tips, courtesy of solar pioneer Al Rich, President and Founder of ACR Solar. 1) Make sure your panels get one good cleaning every year for best performance. “My experience is that cleaning solar panels when they get that …

Besides the savings, independence and freedom, solar systems also tend to be relatively low maintenance. Here’s four tips to help to ensure that your solar panels perform well for a long time. 1) Keep Your Panels Clean Since the panels are exposed and most likely on your roof, dirt, dust, bird droppings and pollen will accumulate. However, rainfall in most …

Solar is typically a low-maintenance investment, and that’s great. But maybe your inverter went out. Maybe you just want someone to check your system out and make sure it’s working properly. You call your installer and learn they are no longer in business. What then? You could try calling some other area installers to see if they can help. The …

Here’s some tips to troubleshoot your inverter and ensure continually high energy production of your solar panels. Quality solar panels are typically built, designed and installed with the guarantee the panels will produce energy for 25 years. Due to their very low maintenance design, most problems that you find with your system are not caused by the panels. Instead, they …

The True-Up Statement can sometimes be confusing to new solar owners. This article is intended to help answer common questions many new solar users have. Homeowners who go solar will see some changes to their utility bill. You will still get a monthly statement from your utility, but won’t be actually billed for your electricity usage until the anniversary of …

The folks at Run on Sun have a seminal blog post entitled “I’ve got solar; why is my bill so high?” intended for consumers who are surprised at the size of their end of year energy bill. It’s a good read; check it out here. Note: this is not a product endorsement; we simply agree with the content of the …