If you’ve ever been to the beach on a cloudy day and thought “I don’t need to put on sunscreen…there’s no sun!” then you probably have a pretty good idea. Just as you can get a wicked burn when it’s overcast, you can still get electricity from your solar system.…
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They do, but they hold up a lot better than you might expect. A high-quality panel will only lose about 7 or 8 percent of its efficiency after a decade. After 25 years, they’ll still be working at 80% capacity. Will your car do that? Rhetorical question. Of course it…
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Barely. Dust can collect on your panels and muffle the intensity of the sun’s rays. Less sunlight results in less energy being produced. Leaves, trash, and dead birds can get stuck under the edges of your panels and block airflow, which causes the system to heat up. Panels generate less…
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At some point, just about everybody wonders if solar panels are waterproof. But it’s actually kind of a dumb question if you think about it. Of course they’re waterproof! They sit up on your roof in the rain and (in many cases) the snow for years and years, and if they didn’t…
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Basically, if you get a power bill, you’re on the grid. The grid is the huge network of power lines that connects your home–and pretty much every other building in America–to power plants, allowing you to get electricity in your house without really ever having to think about it. Meters…
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