DIY Installation: Should I Install My Own Solar Panels?
Everyone loves saving money. And especially in America, there’s also a certain pride in the do-it-yourself (DIY) approach to fixing and improving things in your life. Especially mechanical things. It’s the guy who can change his own oil versus the guy who takes his car to Jiffy Lube. Or being able to fix your own computer rather than calling in a repair technician.
So it’s not surprising that DIY solar panels have found their place in this DIY market. People love to believe they can do it themselves.
Questions to ask before beginning
Before beginning any DIY project, it’s wise to ask yourself a few basic questions, such as:
Q: What is my goal, my main reason for doing this?
Q: What technical skills or knowledge will I need?
Q: Do I have the tools and the ability to use them?
Q: Will anyone else care that I’m doing this (like the government, power company, or worse yet — spouse)?
Q: How long will it take?
Q: Will I know what to do if I mess up?
Q: How much money will I save, and is it worth the extra time I’ll have to invest?
That last question is a big one. Sure, the person who can change their own oil saves money. But they also get really dirty, spend a lot more time doing it, and have to deal with the used oil. You weigh that against the pride you get from doing it yourself, and you decide what’s more valuable.
DIY solar installation is not like changing oil
With solar panels, if you do any investigation at all, you’ll quickly discover that installing solar panels is much more complex than changing your oil. Solar panels are not software. You don’t just install them and click “start.”
“Okay,” you might be thinking, “It’s complicated. I get it. But that’s not a reason not to do something.”
True. So let’s apply those seven questions to DIY solar panel installation.
1. Why do you want to install your own solar system?
For most people, the answer to this usually comes down to saving money. Some like challenges, want to learn how things work, gain new skills, or they enjoy the feeling of independence and self-reliance. Maybe you want to impress people.
But for most of the major DIY solar kits out there, saving money is pretty much their only sales pitch. They do cost comparisons, and make it seem like installing your own panels will save thousands, depending on the size of your DIY solar system.
But does DIY solar power actually save you money? We’ll get back to that.
Whatever the reason — know why you want to do this yourself. Because that’s what you have to measure against everything else you’re about to read.
2. What skills and knowledge will I need to install my panels?
Here is where most people will run into trouble. Why? Because you need a lot of knowledge and skill to install a working and efficient solar energy system. Let’s look at a few of the biggest hurdles:
Electricity
Have you ever done electrical work? Most people haven’t. Connecting wires, attaching leads, testing voltage (is high voltage good or bad?) — there’s a reason electricians go through long apprenticeship programs and then get paid pretty high wages to do what they do.
It’s tricky.
And electricity isn’t something to mess around with if you don’t know anything about it. You can get killed. You can overload electrical wiring and burn your house down. Yes, you can.
Here’s a simple test to find out if you know anything about electricity:
Do you know what it means to “ground” something?
If that question made you think of coffee, then you shouldn’t install your own solar panels. Grounding is an electrical term. When you install solar panels, you have to ground them, and there are certain approved methods you must choose from to do this. (And no, it doesn’t mean the solar panels are on the ground).
You’ll have to research those methods, figure out which one seems best for your situation, learn how to do it, and then do it properly. Are you confident enough to bet your life (or your kids’) on it?
Permits and regulations
Grounding regulations are just one type of approval you’ll have to get. You’ll need to investigate the various regulations and necessary permits required by government agencies and your utility company when connecting a new solar energy system to the grid.
Yes, you could install an off-grid system, but that usually costs more and has its own drawbacks (compare on-grid to off-grid solar here). Remember — if your goal is to save money, pay attention to how many things you’ll have to spend extra money on to install solar panels yourself.
Once you learn about all these permits, regulations, and fees, you’ll then have to pay for them.
Solar panel installation — the number one area of missing knowledge:
This isn’t just about connecting hookups or even installing your inverter and connecting it to your electrical panel. The solar panel installation process also requires proper positioning of your panels.
You’ll encounter a number of new concepts, such as tilt, orientation, and positioning on the roof.
Some DIY solar articles talk about how “easy” it is to install your own panels. But when you start reading the details, you realize how much there is to learn. For example, any honest DIY solar article has to talk about “sun charts” or something of that nature.
Tilt, orientation, and positioning address the biggest problem we have with the sun: It moves. It doesn’t stay in the same position. And not just each day, but each season. In winter, it’s more to the southern portion of the sky. In summer, it’s more northern. This matters, because the angle of optimal sunlight changes by season and time of day.
Properly installed panels will incorporate positioning and tilt, and how close your panels are to each other. This has a huge impact on the amount of energy your solar system will produce.
This is the number one reason to avoid a DIY solar panel installation.
If you do it wrong, you will miss out on thousands of dollars in long-term savings.
Remember how the goal of DIY solar is to save money?
There’s a reason that, just like electricians, solar installation experts also have certification programs and spend a significant amount of time going through them. The primary one is the NABCEP certification for PV installations.
Anytime you’re doing something yourself that professionals spend months or years learning how to do – you have to ask yourself why those training programs exist, and if it’s really wise to presume you can just bypass all of it.
Some basic solar installation questions
- Do you know how to assess the space on your roof, and which parts of it aren’t suitable for solar panels?
- Do you know how to make secure connections to your roof without causing future leaks?
- Do you know how to position the panels for maximum space utilization as well as maximum efficiency for power generation?
- Do you know how to determine what tilt and panel orientation are best for your specific house, for which way your roof faces? Should it be the same for all the panels?
- Do you know how to determine if a ground installation might be better?
- Do you know how to assess the quality of various types and brands of solar panels and all the other equipment manufacturers you’ll have to investigate
- Do you know how to deal with potential shading from nearby trees or buildings?
- Do you know how to assess the quality of your roof, if it’s in good condition to install solar panels?
Getting the picture?
Solar installers know and consider all of this and more when they design solar systems. You can’t learn all this in a couple weeks. No one can. So you’ll either spend months and months on it, thereby delaying the benefits of going solar, or you’ll just “wing” it and hope for the best.
Either way, you won’t save as much money as you should have.
3. What tools do I need to install my own panels?
No need to get too technical here. But if you’ve never done anything with electricity, then you’ll have to spend some money on all the necessary tools. Like voltmeters. And you’ll have to learn how to use them, too. That means some science and practical physics, as well as how that applies to the various devices.
For ground installations, you have to install posts to mount the solar panels. One DIY solar article talking about how “easy” this is went on to say they poured concrete foundations for the posts that their ground-based solar panels would sit on.
Do you know how to pour concrete? Do you know how deep to make the hole, how to set it, or when to put the post in before it hardens? How do you know if it’s straight or slightly tilted? Once the concrete is hard, you’re done, so you better get it right the first time!
Are leaky roofs fun?
For roof installations, you have to drill holes and bolt in all the mounting hardware and rails. Do you want holes there? Are you sure you know how to keep the water out?
Just like electricity, messing with a roof is serious business. Mess it up, and you get leaks. Bad news. Now you have to take off the panels, fix the leak, and put them back on. Are we still saving money?
4. What will the government and utility company require?
You have to abide by the regulations of the federal, state, and local government (vote carefully!).
You’re going to wade into some deep waters here and try not to drown in all the red tape, permits, fees, and codes. You have to learn all this yourself.
And, your utility company won’t let you connect your system to the grid unless a certified electrician signs off on it. What will you do if the electrician says you did it wrong? Still saving money?
This is not an attempt to exaggerate. There really are a lot of regulations, permits, and certification documents associated with solar power, because you’re messing with the electric grid. And that affects everyone.
5. How long will installing solar panels take?
No one should ever believe that a DIY solar project will take less time than paying someone. That’s one reason people pay. Even for oil changes. It’s just faster.
Installing your own solar panels is no different. What takes the pros a few days to a few weeks (for large systems) to complete will take you many times longer than that. And that’s including all the learning you’ll have to do.
This will consume a large portion of your life if you try a DIY solar installation.
6. What happens If you make costly mistakes?
What if you mess up during the installation? There are two layers to this question. First, there are immediate mistakes, and those can be costly.
Dropping a panel and damaging the components, for example. Now it’s busted, and you have to buy a new one. Messing up the electrical installation and frying something. That’s also going to cost you (in time and money).
Other mistakes, you won’t even know you’ve made them until it’s too late.
IMPORTANT: Most professional solar power companies will not perform maintenance on self-installed systems or anything not done and certified by a qualified company. So, if you run into a serious issue you can’t fix yourself, you can’t simply abort and call in the pros. You might be at a total loss.
Like, what if you install your panels at the wrong angle, and find out a year later that you’ve been missing out on 50 kWh of solar energy per month because of it?
Again, this is real money you’ll be losing, that the pros would have saved you. Think about the math. Suppose you install your panels at a non-optimal angle and tilt, and end up missing out on just $100 per month of energy savings you would have made with a professional installation. Ten bucks isn’t that much, right?
Over a 20-year period of time, that comes to $24,000 in lost savings. And DIY solar is about saving money, right?
7. But I will still save money on DIY solar, right?
If you get lucky, maybe. But frankly, we doubt it. The great number of ways you can make costly mistakes is far too large to list them all here. You’ve read about a few of them. But with solar, you have to think long term. Small mistakes lead to lost savings over 10, 20, possibly even 40-year periods of time.
When dealing with decades of potential savings, you want to maximize every cent of energy savings with your solar system. You simply don’t have the training or expertise to accomplish this. You will miss something, and you’ll lose out on the savings that go with it.
And those missed savings will add up, every month, and negate whatever few thousand dollars you might have saved on the actual installation by doing it yourself and avoiding labor costs. That’s really the only area you’re saving money. But your mistakes can more than eclipse the lower price you pay for DIY solar panels, both during the installation and in the years afterward.
Other ways you’ll miss out on savings:
Missed tax incentives
Some solar incentives only kick in when the installation is done by a certified technician. That’s big money you will miss out on. And that alone will more than make up for any extra installation costs
No warranties
Professionally installed solar panels come with 25-year warranties. If something goes wrong on your DIY solar installation, you lose the money — and the time — as you figure out how to fix it.
For most solar companies, the warranty is included at no extra cost.
DIY systems are too small
One DIY solar kit charges $2900 for a 1kW system, and $5000 for a 2kW system. Any farm or rural business wanting to have a real impact on their power bill will need a lot more than that. So you’ll be spending well over $10,000 on these kits if you really want to accomplish anything — and get no warranty or help. Plus, these systems aren’t meant to be connected together (at least at any great volume), so you’ll have to figure out how to make it all work together.
DIY solar? Not if you want to save money
Quite simply, solar energy is just too complicated to do yourself. Yes, you can do the tasks. But you can’t do them as well as a certified technician. And with solar, small mistakes add up to thousands in lost savings over the life of your panels.
Those losses, combined with the uncertainty of having no warranty, lost tax incentives, having to fix any errors yourself, having to learn about regulations, electricity, roof assessment, and even astronomy (the sun’s ever-changing position) — you are climbing a very steep hill when you choose to install your own solar panels.
And in the months you’ll spend investing all this extra effort, you could have just had a pro do it, and you’d already be reaping monthly savings on your electric bill — savings you’ll still be waiting for as you DIY.
If you want the best system, and you want it producing renewable energy as soon as possible while leveraging all the tax incentives and warranties, you want a professional installer to conduct your solar system design and installation process.
