Welcome to solarhomeinstallers.com! The solar industry has really taken off in the past decade, and not just in the United States. Some of the largest solar production facilities on the planet have gone up in China, and European countries are well ahead of the United States in subsidizing alternative power of all types. Solar power also has amazing potential in developing countries, where its freedom from existing electrical infrastructure makes it an even better investment than it already is in developed countries. What gets lost in the shuffle of the solar discourse is the importance of trained solar home installers. There are several reasons that you should want to have your photovoltaic system professionally installed.
Safety
When people talk about solar panels, safety does not often come up. That is because as a form of power generation that is silent and has no moving parts, safety doesn’t immediately spring to mind the way it does with a wind turbine’s spinning blades. But safety is an important aspect of any solar installation. The most common place to put solar panels is up on the roof. This is because firstly, it removes them from ground level shade cast by buildings and trees, and secondly because it keeps them from eating up square footage that can be put to other uses.
When considering a rooftop installation there are two primary areas of safety to focus on, weight and attachment security. Solar panels are fairly light individually, but they can add a thousand pounds or more worth of weight to your roof, and it is important to ensure your roof can support the additional weight. A solar home installer can check the weight bearing capacity of your roof, and if need be structurally reinforce it so that it can hold the panels.
Attachment security is simply ensuring that your solar panels will stay put once they are installed. There are several different bracketing styles for various roof materials/pitches, and solar home installers will ensure that the best fit for your roof is used. A panel coming loose, whether because of wind or just the rigors of the seasons, is a recipe for a costly headache. Professional installation will ensure you don’t have to deal with it.
Performance
Panels themselves are only a portion of the equation when it comes to maximizing the performance of your photovoltaic system. Professional solar home installers understand the complexities of solar power systems and how to make them work as efficiently as they can. There are AC/DC conversion losses to account for, battery leakage to consider, charge controllers, inverters, and of course grid tie equipment if you choose to go that route. It all adds up to a complicated set of variables that need to be optimized to ensure your system is functioning as efficiently as possible.
Cost
Cost is perhaps the most counterintuitive aspect of professional installation, but the fact is that in many cases your system will actually cost less to have professionally installed. This is because most state and federal rebate programs require that you have your system professionally installed to be eligible for the rebates. Since depending on your state of residence these rebates can be 30% or more of the total cost of your system, the savings you gain by having a professional solar home installer put your system together can more than offset the installation cost.