Go Solar Finder publishes general information about residential solar equipment: reviews, troubleshooting guides, and sizing and cost explainers. It is general information only.
It is not electrical advice, engineering advice, financial advice, tax advice, or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for a licensed professional who can see your actual system.
Please read this page before acting on anything published here.
Stop and get help now if any of this is happening
Do not troubleshoot, and do not consult this site or any other, if you notice:
- Smoke, burning smells, scorch marks, melted connectors or cable insulation
- Visible arcing, sparking, or buzzing from the array, isolators, wiring, or inverter
- A battery that is swollen, leaking, hissing, or hot to the touch
- Water inside an inverter, combiner box, or battery enclosure
- Any damaged, exposed, or hanging DC wiring, especially after a storm
Keep people away from the equipment, do not attempt to isolate it yourself if that means approaching it, and contact your installer or your emergency services. A battery or DC fire is not an ordinary electrical fire and is not something to tackle with a domestic extinguisher.
Solar is electrical work, and it can kill you
This is not a formality. Solar carries hazards that ordinary household wiring does not, and readers regularly underestimate them:
A solar array has no off switch. Panels generate voltage whenever daylight falls on them. Even with the inverter shut down, the AC breaker off, and the system "dead", the panels and the DC wiring between them and the inverter can sit at hundreds of volts DC. Covering panels does not reliably de-energise them. The array is live at dawn, live on an overcast day, and live while you are working on it.
DC arcs behave differently from AC arcs. Mains AC crosses zero volts a hundred times a second, which tends to snuff out an arc. DC does not. A loose or corroded DC connection can sustain an arc, and a sustained arc is how solar installations start fires.
Batteries stay dangerous when everything is off. A battery bank holds its energy whether or not the sun is up and whether or not the system is isolated from the grid. Shorting terminals — with a spanner, a watch strap, a dropped screwdriver — can deliver enormous current, and lithium chemistries can enter thermal runaway, which cannot simply be switched off once it starts.
Most of this equipment is on a roof. Falls injure and kill more people in this trade than electricity does.
A wrongly connected grid-tied inverter can backfeed the network. That can energise lines a utility worker believes are dead. Anti-islanding protection exists to prevent it, and it is not something to test, bypass, or take on trust after unqualified work.
Nothing on this site replaces a licensed electrician or an accredited solar installer.
What this site is not
Not your installer. Go Solar Finder does not sell, install, commission, inspect, or service solar equipment. Nothing here creates a professional relationship, and no article has seen your roof, your switchboard, your array, or your local code.
Not a substitute for the manual. Where anything on this site conflicts with the manufacturer's documentation or safety instructions for your specific equipment, follow the manufacturer, not this site, and ask your installer or the manufacturer if the conflict is unclear.
Not an authority on your compliance, permits, or warranty. Those depend on your jurisdiction, your utility, your installer, and your specific contract.
About the troubleshooting guides
Troubleshooting guides here describe causes commonly associated with a given fault or error code. They are written in general terms, without seeing your system, its history, its installation quality, or its firmware. The same code can mean different things across manufacturers, models, and firmware versions. A guide can help you understand what a fault probably indicates and have a better-informed conversation with your installer. It cannot diagnose your system.
Regardless of what any guide appears to suggest, do not:
- Open an inverter, combiner, or battery enclosure
- Work on DC wiring, connectors, or an array that has not been isolated by someone competent to isolate it
- Work on or near battery terminals
- Bypass, defeat, or "temporarily" remove an isolator, breaker, RCD, fuse, or interlock
- Climb onto a roof to chase a fault
Two further things worth knowing before you pick up a tool:
DIY intervention commonly voids warranties, and can affect your building or contents insurance. Manufacturers routinely reject claims on equipment that shows signs of unauthorised work.
Most jurisdictions require permits, inspection, and utility approval for installing or modifying a grid-connected system, and require the work to be done by a licensed or accredited person. Unpermitted work can void insurance, block or reverse your grid interconnection, and create problems when you sell the property. Your local authority having jurisdiction and your utility set those rules — this site does not know them for your address.
Costs, savings, and payback are estimates, never promises
Any price, saving, payback period, yield, or return figure published here is an illustration to help you reason about a decision. It is not a quote, not a forecast, and not a guarantee, and it will not match your result.
What actually happens to your numbers depends on things no article can know:
- Your electricity tariff and rate structure, and how it changes over the life of the system
- Your net metering, export, or feed-in arrangements — and whether they still exist in a few years
- Your site's sunlight, orientation, tilt, shading, and soiling
- Local temperature, which reduces output as it rises
- Panel degradation over time, and inverter or battery replacement partway through the system's life
- When your household actually uses power, not just how much
- Your financing terms, and the total cost of credit
- Your installer's pricing and what equipment is actually available to you
Incentives change and are specific. Tax credits, rebates, grants, and feed-in tariffs vary by country, state or province, and utility; they carry eligibility conditions; they are amended and withdrawn. Any incentive described here may be out of date by the time you read it, and may not apply to you.
Nothing here is financial, tax, investment, or legal advice. Before you sign an installation contract, a finance agreement, a lease, or a power purchase agreement, and before you rely on any incentive, get advice from a qualified professional — a licensed installer for the technical claims, and a qualified financial or tax adviser for the money — about your own circumstances.
Go Solar Finder does not promise that solar will save you any particular amount, pay for itself in any particular time, or be the right financial decision for you.
Accuracy, and the fact that all of this ages
Specifications, firmware, prices, product availability, safety notices, code requirements, and incentive rules all change. Older articles may be out of date in ways that are not obvious. Always confirm anything that matters against current manufacturer documentation and a qualified local professional before you decide or spend.
The information here is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including as to accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Go Solar Finder accepts no liability for any loss, damage, injury, or cost arising from reliance on anything published here. You use this information at your own risk.
Links to other sites
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Related pages
- Editorial Policy — the standards behind what gets published
- Affiliate Disclosure — how money works on this site
- Contact — corrections and questions