Basics

The sun is shining, the roof has solar panels, and the house still goes dark during an outage.

A 400W solar panel is not promising to deliver 400W every moment it sees daylight.

A clear hot afternoon can produce less solar power than a cooler bright day.

A narrow chimney shadow can reduce solar output by more than its small area suggests.

A solar production graph rises smoothly and then develops a flat top.

MPPT can help a solar system extract more useful power, but it cannot create energy that the panels do not receive.

A 10kWh home battery can store a substantial amount of energy and still be unable to start a particular appliance.

Your solar app says the roof generated 20kWh, but the utility records only 7kWh of export.

Cloud cover usually reduces solar output, but it does not automatically reduce it to zero.

A solar panel and a battery can have similar nominal voltage labels and still be an unsuitable direct connection.