The cost of a solar electric system is relative to several factors: how much electricity you use, how much roof/ground space you have and your budget. Therefore, each system is solar system is specifically designed to meet the needs of each individual family, farm or business.

Good question! This is determined by the amount of electricity you use and how much space you have—roof or ground. Most residential systems have between 10 – 30 panels and most commercial and agricultural solar installations have around 100+ panels.

Simple, we take a look at your electric bill to know how much electricity you are currently using and we design the solar system based on that. We use national averages to know how much sunlight can be converted to electricity for our geographic region and our projections are usually right on track.

We hope you do buy an electric vehicle and charge it with solar power! If you do need more electricity and plan to buy your new car soon, we can incorporate that into the design and work with the utility to have it approved. If you buy the EV years down the road, we can come back and add more solar panels, certainly. However, due to economies of scale and general efficiencies, we do recommend having the larger system installed up front if you can, as it will save you some money.

Due to safety precautions with the electric utility, it is mandated that a grid-tied system be designed to stop sending electricity to your home and the grid during a power outage. Therefore, if you have a grid-tied system, and most of our customers do, you will not have power during a black out or power outage.

Due to no moving parts, maintenance isn’t really required. The solar panels just sit there and do their thing. If ever you noticed a problem, you could contact us and we’ll check it out. We install computer monitoring with each system that you and Appalachian Renewable Power can monitor to see what is going on.

Yes! There are several warranties:

1. Solar panels – 25 years
2. Inverter – 10 years
3. Workmanship – 10 years

It’s important to note that as an electrical system, your system will likely show problems right away—if any at all and we will not collect our final payment until your system is up and running at 100% production.

You will definitely want to put your solar system on your home owner’s insurance for things like golf-ball sized hail and acts of God weather events. However, solar panels are put through a battery of tests to confirm their durability and receive their UL (Underwriter’s Lab) listing.

More than likely your insurance won’t go up, but each company policy is different, so it may. Either way, you will want to put your new solar electric system on your home owner’s insurance.

Most optimally the solar panels are put onto a relatively new roof, and then the new roof and solar panels will live out their lives together. We can determine if your roof is looking like it should be replaced before the panels go up.