Primary assessments for home solar
Solar panel systems transform sunlight into usable electricity. Therefore, most of the factors influencing your home’s solar potential revolve around one basic principle: the amount of direct sunlight available. Within this realm, the amount of sunlight available depends on your geographic location and several site-specific influences.
1. Your location
In addition to local weather conditions, the number of annual sunlight hours shining on your home depends primarily on your property’s latitude. For example, a solar panel on a bungalow in Los Angeles would produce more annual electricity than the same panel on a cottage on Cape Cod, as the city of L.A. experiences a higher amount of clear sunlight hours per year than coastal New England.
Further, any local regulations, permitting processes, or zoning laws can also affect certain aspects of your installation, such as the exact system design or total costs of your solar permit and interconnection fees.
To quickly see an accurate solar potential report for your property, feel free to use our solar calculator.
2. Orientation and slope of your roof
In the Northern Hemisphere, south-facing roofs receive the most direct sunlight and are therefore ideal for solar panel placement. East and west-facing roofs can also be utilized if they are directly sunlit for most of the day.
For maximum efficiency, residential ground-mounted solar panels are usually installed facing due south at an angle equal to the property’s latitude. Although there are exceptions, most ordinary roof slopes in the US—angled between 15 and 40 degrees—are suitable for efficient solar power generation. Solar racking hardware can also be used to optimize panel installation angle within the constraints of local building codes.
3. Available space for solar panel placement
For solar panels to be viable on your roof, the proposed installation space must be free of shading from nearby trees, buildings, or structures. Solar panels must also be installed at an appropriate distance from roof edges and obstructions like dormers, vents, or chimneys. When shading or obstructions are present, Enphase IQ Microinverters can maximize solar energy production.