Preparing for a Solar Site Visit

One of the first steps when considering solar is the on-site visit. This involves a solar installer visiting your home and inspecting your roof to gauge the potential success of a solar installation. It is an important step in the solar process that potential solar customers should be prepared for. This on-site visit will allow the solar installer to conduct the following assessments:

  • A brief interview to understand the homeowner’s electrical needs.
  • A physical inspection to gauge whether the proposed panel site it is suitable for solar.

The Interview

In the interview, a solar installer’s main goal is to understand what your electricity use has been over the past months, especially during summer and winter when electricity rates are typically the highest. To facilitate this with ease, it is important that you have at least the last 12 months worth of electrical bills. Based on the size of your bill, the installer can determine what option, in terms of system size and how much of your bill you want to offset, would work best. This information is vital to the installer as it forms the basis of their formal bid. A solar system that offsets 50% rather than 90% of your monthly electric bill will be less expensive. Additionally, after discussing your monthly electric usage, your solar installer may recommend or even require that you implement certain energy efficiency home improvements before installation. By reducing your electric demand through simple home efficiency improvements, you will not need as large of a home solar system to offset your electric bill.

Site Inspection

The second component of the solar on-site visit is the roof inspection to make certain that the installer will be able to mount the solar panels. Specifically, the installer will be assessing solar access and the roof’s orientation. Solar access is basically the percentage of time that the proposed solar system will be receiving full un-shaded sunlight throughout the different days of the year. If a roof has too much shade, it will not be a candidate for a solar system, although there are a few ways to address this problem. You can look at alternate sites on the home property, trim or remove trees, or use multiple smaller power inverters rather than one large central power inverter in the system design. The other variable the solar installer will be looking at is roof orientation. This refers to the direction that the roof faces. A roof that faces due south is by far the best, even when allowing a small margin of error to the east or west.

Conclusion

In the end, the solar installer who conducted this on-site visit will summarize his findings into a written report which calculates the cost of your proposed home solar system - the basis of their bid to you. Remember to always ask your installer to include the applicable tax rebates/incentives as well as alternative financing mechanisms in their report and bid. Also make sure that you are comfortable and understand each line item and cost in your bid.

**Interested in a $0 electrical bill? Click here to get a free solar assessment!**