What To AskBefore You Go Solar

This one's a hard yes or no, not a maybe: it only works if you own the house. If you rent, Skyline can't install here, period, and that's not a judgment about you, it's just the rule. One clarification: that's about who owns the house, not the equipment. Even homeowners don't own the solar system itself, more on that under “What Exactly Am I Committing To,” a few questions down.

This is one of the first things to ask at your consultation, and it comes before anything else. If a roof needs replacing soon, that work should happen before panels go up, not after. Otherwise you're paying for the roof and paying again to have the panels pulled and reset. Skyline's team can look at your roof and tell you where it stands.

Ask to see how your actual electric usage and your actual bill line up against what solar would change, not a rough estimate, your real numbers. Solar isn't automatically worth it for every house. It depends on how much power you use and what you're currently paying for it. Skyline's team runs those numbers against your account.

Heavy shade from trees or nearby buildings, or a roof that's small, oddly shaped, or already crowded with vents and skylights, can limit what solar can realistically do for a house. Ask Skyline's team to walk you through what your specific roof gets.

What Skyline sets up is a power purchase agreement, and that agreement is with GoodLeap or LightReach, the company financing the system, not with Skyline. That means the system stays on your roof, and you buy the power it produces under agreed terms, instead of buying that portion of your electricity from your utility. Ask for the plain-language walkthrough of what that agreement actually says before you sign anything.

A lot of people assume solar panels alone keep the lights on in an outage. Ask directly: does this system include backup, and which battery is it? Most grid-tied solar shuts off automatically in a power outage unless there's a specific battery built for backup.

Ask this one directly at your consultation: does solar eliminate the bill, or just reduce it? It reduces it. It doesn't necessarily eliminate it, and you may still see utility charges after the system is running.

Inverters, optimizers, and batteries are mechanical and electronic systems. Like anything else at your house, they can eventually need service. More than one company can be standing behind different pieces of it: the panel manufacturer and whoever's financing the system. Ask what's covered, by whom, for how long, and who you actually call when something needs attention.