Learn solar
Learn solar, start to finish
Every homeowner guide on the site, sorted by the decision it helps with: the basics, choosing an installer, equipment, your kind of home, and life after switch-on.
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Written by HyreSolar Research Desk Primary-source research and fact checking
The short answer
Start with how solar works, then financing and choosing an installer. Four numbers decide whether solar pays for your house: annual electricity use, usable roof, your retail rate and what your utility pays for exports.
Each guide lists its sources and the date it was last checked.
Start here
The three explainers everything else assumes you have read.
Solar basics
Work out whether any of this applies to your house.
Choosing an installer
The company matters as much as the equipment.
Equipment
What the hardware does and how long it lasts.
Your home and your situation
Solar answers differ by who owns the roof and what is on it.
Living with it
Everything that happens after permission to operate.
Your inquiry
Tell us about your home
Nothing goes to a solar professional unless you agree.
Free, with no obligation: a person reads it and gets back to you. Matching is not live yet, so this is not a quote.
Get Solar Options
If you have done your research and want to speak with a solar professional, HyreSolar can help you explore available options.
Questions
Where should I start if I know nothing about solar?
How long does it take to understand this well enough to decide?
Which mistakes do these guides help me avoid?
Does reading these guides commit me to anything?
Written and audited by
HyreSolar Research
Primary-source research, data analysis and fact checking
We are a research desk, not a sales floor. We read the statute, the tariff, the code section, the federal filing or the manufacturer data sheet ourselves, and we publish the figure with the document it came from and the date we retrieved it.
Where a number cannot be traced to a primary source, we publish the shorter page and say what we could not verify. That rule has cost us whole sections, and it is why the rest can be checked.
- 160
- primary sources read and cited
- 228
- figures with a retrieval date
- 115
- federal and state government sources
- 66
- researched pages published
How this desk works
- Primary sources only. Statutes from the legislature’s own publishing system, federal data from the agency that collects it, code text from the adopted edition, manufacturer claims from the data sheet. We do not cite an article that cites a source; we go and read the source.
- Every figure carries its provenance. A named document and the date we retrieved it, so you can check it and so you know how old it is. Retrieval dates are not decoration: an EIA rate from May is a different fact from an EIA rate from August.
- We publish what we could not verify. Every research page carries a section naming the things we tried to establish and could not, and why. A paywalled standard, a state website that refused the request, a manufacturer that publishes no figure at all.
- We separate measurement from modeling from our own reasoning, and label which is which on the page. A laboratory measurement, an assumption inside a modeling tool and our own inference are three different kinds of claim and they are never presented as one.
- We do not sell solar, and we take no payment for placement, ranking or a favorable mention. Nobody buys a position on this site.
Authorship on this site is organizational: the analysis belongs to the desk rather than to a named individual, and we do not publish credentials we do not hold. Our editorial policy sets out how we source, date and correct what we publish.
HyreSolar is an independent solar information site. We do not install, finance, maintain or service solar systems, and nothing here is tax, legal or financial advice. Figures and rules vary by location, utility, system design and your own circumstances.