energystack

Energy Stack / Solar

Layer 01 · Generation

Solar.

Panels are mostly a commodity. What matters is everything around them: inverter choice, roof geometry, the tariff you are on, and the surprisingly large gap between modelled and measured output.

14 guides 3 tools 22 articles

In this section

Guides

Panels

Bifacial, half-cut, n-type: what the spec sheet really tells you

A short tour of the panel-spec acronyms and which of them you should actually weight.

Inverters

String, hybrid or microinverters: a decision tree

Once you draw the roof out, the right answer is usually obvious. This guide draws it for you.

Install

DC isolators: the boring component that fails first

Three pages on the dullest part of your install, because it is the part most likely to catch fire.

Output

Why MCS estimates are so often wrong, and which way

A reader sent us their first year of generation data. We graphed it against the estimate.

Tools

Calculators

All tools →

Recent essays

In this section

Long read · 9 min

Why our first system was the wrong shape

Field note · 6 min

Two installers, three quotes, the same roof

Reader letter · 5 min

A 16-panel install in north Wales, three years on