Who I Am
Hi, I’m James Cooper. I work as a [solar installer / electrical technician / energy consultant] based in Elk Grove, California, and for the past 10 years my working week has been spent on rooftops, in switchboards, and on the phone with homeowners whose inverters are flashing lights nobody explained to them.
Outside of work, I’m the person in my family who gets called before the electrician does. My neighbours know me as the guy who will climb up and check your panels for free if you bring the tea. That’s not a business model it’s just how I ended up learning more about real-world solar behaviour than any datasheet ever taught me.
How I Got Into Solar
My first system wasn’t a customer’s. It was my own family home, back in [2017].
We were dealing with [load-shedding / brutal summer electricity bills / an unreliable grid connection], and I decided to fix it myself. I read everything, watched every video, bought a [5kW] inverter and [12] panels, and wired it up with total confidence.
Within the first year I had made almost every mistake a beginner can make. I undersized my cable run and lost power I’d paid for. I paired the wrong charge controller with my battery bank and cooked [a set of batteries] that cost me [a month’s salary]. I mounted panels at an angle that looked right and produced wrong.
But the system worked eventually and something else happened along the way: I got hooked. I did my [certification / trade training], started installing professionally in [2019], and since then I’ve personally installed or serviced [over 300] residential systems using equipment from [Growatt, Deye, Solis, Fronius, GoodWe list the brands you actually work with].
That last part matters, and it’s the reason this site exists.
What I Actually Know
I want to be specific about where my knowledge comes from, because “I know a lot about solar” is exactly the kind of sentence I don’t trust when I read it on other sites.
Here is what I have hands-on experience with:
- Residential string and hybrid inverters — installation, commissioning, and fault diagnosis across [the major Chinese and European brands]. I’ve stood in front of the error codes. I’ve been on hold with the support lines. I know which brands answer the phone.
- Troubleshooting in the field — a large share of my service calls are systems someone else installed. WiFi sticks that won’t pair, inverters stuck on initializing, monitoring apps showing zero when the system is producing fine. I’ve built a mental database of what actually causes these faults versus what the forums guess.
- System sizing for real households — not calculator-website sizing, but sizing based on how families in [your region] actually use power: [the evening AC load, the water pump, the freezer that can’t go down].
- Battery retrofits and hybrid conversions — including the compatibility landmines nobody mentions until your installer has already left.
And here’s what I don’t know, so you can calibrate: I don’t do utility-scale or commercial rooftop work. I have no experience with [solar thermal / tracking systems / off-grid systems above 15kW]. When a topic on this site goes beyond my direct experience, I will say so in the article itself.
The proof I can offer isn’t a certificate on a wall. It’s numbers: [300+] systems, [X] years, and a phone that still rings when something breaks because the people I’ve installed for send me their friends.
The Gap I Kept Running Into
When I was learning and honestly, even now when I research a new product line I kept hitting the same wall, and I’ve watched my customers hit it too.
Search for any two inverter brands with “vs” between them, and here is what you get: pages that were clearly written by someone who has never opened either unit’s packaging. Two spec tables copied from manufacturer PDFs, a paragraph of padding, and an affiliate link. The efficiency numbers are quoted to two decimal places, and none of it tells you the thing you actually need to know which one will still be working, supported, and repairable in year seven.
The troubleshooting side is worse. When your inverter throws a fault at 7pm, your options are a 40-page PDF manual written in translated engineering language, or a forum thread from 2021 where three people guess and nobody comes back to confirm the fix.
There are excellent solar resources online — but they are written for [the US/European market], reviewing brands and price points that don’t match what’s actually sold and installed in [your target market]. The brands dominating real rooftops here [Deye, Growatt, Solis, Sungrow] — get the least honest coverage, precisely because they’re where the affiliate-content industry is laziest.
Nobody was writing from the position of the person who installs these machines, services them when they fail, and hears what homeowners say two years after purchase. So that’s the position I’m writing from.
What This Site Will Do Differently
One rule governs everything published here: if I haven’t installed it, serviced it, or torn it down myself or interviewed someone who has I will tell you that plainly in the article.
Concretely, that means:
- Comparisons based on field behaviour, not spec sheets. When I compare two inverters, the spec table will be there — but the verdict will come from install experience: build quality, fault rates I’ve seen, firmware quirks, and how each brand’s support actually behaves when you need a warranty claim.
- Troubleshooting guides written from service calls. Every fix I publish is one I’ve performed or verified. If a fault has three possible causes, I’ll rank them by how often I’ve actually encountered each one — not list them alphabetically.
- Local context in every buying guide. Real prices in [your market], what’s actually stocked by distributors here, and which “global” recommendations simply don’t apply.
- Documented failures. When I recommend something, I’ll show you the failed unit, the error log, or the warranty email chain. Negative experience is the most expensive knowledge there is if you’re getting mine for free.
What’s Coming on This Site
This site is for homeowners and small installers in [your target market] who are choosing, sizing, or fixing a residential solar system, especially anyone comparing the value-tier brands that dominate real-world installs.
The content will be organized into four main areas:
- Brand & model comparisons the “X vs Y” decisions, covering inverters, panels, and batteries, written with the depth of someone who’s handled both sides of the “vs.”
- Troubleshooting & fault guides — searchable, step-by-step fixes for the errors, connectivity failures, and monitoring problems that generate most of my service calls.
- Reviews — long-term, follow-up-included reviews of the equipment I install most.
- Sizing & planning guides — how much system you actually need, what it will really cost here, and what it will genuinely save.
I plan to publish [one to two] in-depth articles per week. I’d rather ship one guide that’s been checked against a real installation than five that are stitched together from other websites. You’ll notice the difference, and so will the comments section.
Come Along
Everything I couldn’t find when I was standing on my own roof in [2017], holding a multimeter and a bad feeling I’m putting it in one place now, for you.
If you’re about to buy your first system, start with my core guide: “[How to Choose Your First Residential Solar System: The Complete Guide]”.
If your inverter is misbehaving right now, head to the [Troubleshooting section] and if your exact fault isn’t covered yet, describe it in the comments. Reader problems set my content calendar; several of the guides on this site exist because someone asked.
You can also reach me directly at [email / contact page]. I read everything, and I answer what I can.
Let’s get your roof working for you.
— James Cooper, Founder of Go Solar Finder.