Common Solar Energy Mistakes Part 3

In part 3 and the final part of our “common mistakes homeowners who get solar-powered systems make”, we will wrap up the mistakes that most homeowners make as well as ways to avoid these solar panel installation mistakes:

Not Planning Ahead

In part 2 of the 3-part series, it was addressed that most solar panels have warranties for 25 years, which is a long time to go without any big changes in your life. When people begin planning for their solar-powered system, everyone thinks about what they need at the moment, not many people think about their needs will change in the future.

What happens when you kids, or get a pet that needs energy, or you buy an electric car that needs charging? You will start consuming more energy. Which is the reason that many solar installers recommend to homeowners to look to the future when you start to plan out for your solar-powered system?

Here are some things to think when planning for a solar panel installation:

Will you have enough space to expand the solar panel installation if necessary? An example let's pretend your solar panel installation takes up your whole rooftop. What happens when you wish to add solar panels later but don’t have anywhere to put them?

Is your system designed to be expandable? In most cases, people often think, “I will just add some more solar panels!” without realizing that they will also need to add other parts of the solar-powered system, such as the solar power inverter. Central solar power inverter has a limit of the number of solar panels that can support, so it isn’t going to be as simple as “just adding solar panels.”

When it comes to the expansion of grid-tied solar-powered systems, micro-inverters are normally a great fit. They work on a one-to-one basis: each of the solar panels is paired with its micro-inverter. If you wish to add on, just be sure to pair it with its micro-inverter. If you wish to add on, all you have to do is pair another inverter/panel pairing and mount them onto your solar power array.

For the off-grid solar panels, you should also think carefully about battery sizing. Depending on the battery sort and age, it may not be possible to expand your existing battery bank.

Lithium battery banks can be expanded, but lead-acid batteries have a limited option for increasing storage capacity.

Overpaying For a Solar Panel Installation

If you are contemplating getting a solar panel installation, typically the first solar installers that come to mind are the big, turnkey solar installers. But when it comes to the cost of solar, the big solar installers will charge you anywhere from 100-200% of the cost of solar to install your solar-powered system. For a solar-powered system worth pf $10,000 in equipment, the solar installers will often charge you another $20,000 to complete the solar panel installation.

The big solar installers need to charge this premium to cover advertising, office rent, insurance, labor, along with other expenses required to run their business on a national scale.

Something that most people fail to realize that if you work with local solar installers it could save you a lot of money..

Building a Solar-Powered System 

This often will pose as a problem when people say that ‘I got an inverter from eBay as well as a few solar panels that I bought a few years back, now I need someone to build/install the rest of the solar-powered system.’

Quite a few people hold out for a great deal as well as acquire parts slowly over time, up until they are ready to throw some sort of solar-powered system together.

But as you wouldn’t acquire parts form a dell laptop as well as parts from MacBook and build it yourself, but you will need to get parts that are compatible with each other.

Because if you don’t you may end up with;

- solar power inverters that are undersized for the output of your solar panels

- solar panels are different sizes and don’t fit together properly on the mount.

- components that don’t wire together because they have different connectors.

- a power center that is missing essential components like circuit breakers/disconnects, remote control, or monitoring hardware.

- a box of useless components that no one is willing to support because it was purchased from all over the Internet.

A lot can go wrong, but the bottom line is when it comes to solar-powered systems, creating your makeshift solar-powered system can quickly turn into a disaster. Unless you start with a plan and stick to it, there’s no guarantee that the parts you buy are ever going to work together.

Ways to Avoid These Solar Panel Installation Mistakes

When researching the solar panels and solar-powered system you may have noticed that most of the time the sites you visit require that their customers will get a professional to design their solar-powered system, at HaHaSmart you can design the solar-powered system yourself by using the design DIY tool and we have professional designers who will make sure that your solar-powered system is up to code.

The reason that most solar companies do it this way is that though they aren’t the solar installers, they are still responsible for designing the solar-powered system properly. If they paired the solar-powered systems with incompatible parts, they would get a bad reputation in a hurry.

But the best advice you can get is, do much research this way you can account for all possible variables. Get multiple quotes to ensure that you are getting the best solar-powered system at a reasonable cost.