By Remedios Tiglao
Before asking if solar is worth it for your home, it’s necessary for solar customers to understand exactly what residential solar companies are offering. Solar panel companies can promise solar customers an array of warranties and performance guarantees. It’s important that when doing research, solar customers know the difference between these warranties in order to get the best deal and highest form of protection for your system. Ultimately, these considerations lead to the best solar panel investment for your home.
In this article, Solar Optimum’s Vice President of Marketing, Rainier de Ocampo, will help to explain why it’s important to be aware of these differences.
What Is a Production Guarantee?
Production guarantees are the promises provided by the installer that your residential solar system will produce the amount of energy that the engineering team designed. These guarantees are tailored to a solar customer’s home as every solar home will produce individualized amounts of energy.
An example of this is if the solar panel company guarantees that your system will produce 15,000 kWh a year and at the end of the year, you find that the system only produced 13,000 kWh. In this scenario, the installer would owe you for the amount that was not produced. It’s very important that homeowners seeking residential solar select a company with an experienced design and maintenance team that will work diligently to ensure that their clients’ systems are always running at their promised production guarantee.
What Is a Performance Guarantee?
Performance guarantees are backed by the manufacturer of the panels and provide security to the solar customer if a panel were to degrade at a faster rather than expected. Though this may seem similar to production, performance guarantees ensure that the panel will last decades on your home. For example, with Solar Optimum, we guarantee that our panels will last 25 years and will continually produce at least 80% of that energy or we will replace the defective panel. Since solar panels are an investment for your future and your home, it’s imperative that you secure a definite guarantee that will last decades and that will continuously produce energy.
Why Is It Important For a Solar Company To Have Performance Guarantees?
Performance guarantees provide customers with energy peace of mind. Residential solar panels and battery backups are large financial investments. Simply put, having a performance guarantee allows solar customers to sleep at night knowing that their system will perform as promised. This way, they can confidently move forward and know that there is no risk and only savings and increased property value to gain. This also keeps the best solar companies accountable for their customers and systems that they install.
Do All Solar Companies Have a Production Guarantee or a Performance Guarantee?
No. In fact, very few companies offer a performance or a production guarantee. This is what separates the best solar installers from the bad ones because the experienced companies can confidently stand behind their systems and will always have their customer’s best interest in mind.
What Is a Degradation Warranty?
As with any piece of technology, solar panels also degrade overtime. Typically, the rate of degradation is less than 1% per year. A degradation warranty will work to provide insurance that the solar panels will still produce a certain amount of energy by their promised years of warranty. Solar Optimum has a degradation warranty of 0.25% per year for our Panasonic panels and REC panels. Once more this works hand in hand with a performance guarantee; if a panel is degrading at a faster rate than expected, Solar Optimum will replace said panel.
Which Is the Most Important For a Homeowner To Have?
While all three are important and oftentimes go hand in hand with one another, the Performance guarantee is the most important. There is a lot of misinformation out there, but looking at a solar system for your solar home is a simple process. At Solar Optimum, we try to eliminate your electricity usage from your utility company and replace it with a much more cost effective option by going solar. Given the right conditions, we can eliminate 100% or more of your usage from your utility company and save you and your family thousands of dollars every year on your electricity bill. The Performance guarantee gives Solar Optimum customers a worry-free experience as they know that all of their power will be accounted for or they will be reimbursed for the difference.
What Warranties or Guarantees Does Solar Optimum Offer Solar Customers?
Solar Optimum offers an UNMATCHED, 6-point, 25 year warranty on our panels, inverters, racking, roof, workmanship and performance guarantee. While most of our competitors only offer 10 year warranties on their workmanship and 12 years on their inverters, Solar Optimum provides 25 years of bumper to bumper warranties that protects our customers from any problems that may arise down the line.
How Does Solar Optimum Deliver High Quality Warranties to Its Solar Customers?
Solar Optimum was named Panasonic’s 2020 National Installer of the Year! No other solar company in the nation can claim this prestigious award! Panasonic also backs our 25 year warranty with their own because they believe in offering the highest quality products along with giving residential solar customers even more confidence in choosing Solar Optimum.
The next time you find yourself asking ‘is solar worth it,’ know that the answer will be ‘always!’ The answer depends on finding the right solar company that fits your needs and provides the highest level of protection that lasts decades.
