10 Things You Need To Know Before Getting Solar Panels Installed in 2026

Getting Started with Solar Installation

If you're looking to get solar installed but you don't know where to start then this video is for you because today I'm going to reveal the top 10 things you need to know before you get solar installed. I'm Jordan from Artisan Electrics and over the past few years we've completed hundreds of solar installs and documented plenty of them here on our YouTube channel and our experience has shown us that there are 10 key things you need to know in order to get a quality solar installation done. So let's head up to the roof and I'll tell you about the first one.

So we're here on the roof of this project that we're midway through completing. The panels are on, we're just fitting the bird protection. We've got 52 panels here, it's quite a large project at this site because they use a lot of power in this house. But the first point that I want to share with you is a really really crucial one and that's the question of how suitable is your roof for solar? What do I mean by that? There are a number of crucial factors when it comes to solar and roof mounted solar particularly.

Roof Suitability for Solar

The first thing that you want to think about is the orientation of your roof. What direction is your roof facing? Now why is that important? Well a south facing roof in the UK is usually ideal because it will get the most hours of sun throughout the day. But sometimes an east and west facing roof can be really good too because the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and you'll actually get a really long day of generation with Sun low in the sky in the east in the morning, you're going to get that morning sun on the east side of the array and the afternoon sun on the west array. You can actually get a very long day of generation with an east-west system. Now, some people might say, but if you've got a north facing roof, it's completely pointless. That's not necessarily true. You can get about 60% generation from a north facing roof as you would from a south facing roof, but it's still definitely much less effective. Than if you've got a beautiful south facing roof. So that's the first thing you want to think about is what direction is your roof facing?

But there's something else that's crucial too with regards to the roof and that is actually how much space do you have on your roof? Now when I say how much space what am I talking about? Well solar panels are generally rectangular in shape that means that you want to have ideally a rectangular shaped roof too. A nice big open space of roof that's a nice rectangle shape is perfect for fitting the optimum amount of solar panels. Now we come across clients often where they approach us really wanting solar, but they've got very awkward roofs with lots of little triangular shapes and things like that, and it's very difficult to fit a decent number of panels. So the ideal roof is a roof like this at this property. We've got two big roofs here. This one on the main house, we're fitting 18 solar panels, and it's a nice double portrait array. And then on the garage, we're also fitting 14 solar panels. And both of these roofs are ideal because they're southeast facing, and they're a perfect shape.

Now the other thing that's important to think about is what pitch is your roof? Why does pitch matter? Well the ideal pitch is the pitch that makes the solar panels face the sun as directly as possible. The optimum pitch is usually somewhere between 30 to 40 degrees. If you've got a really, really steep roof, like 50 degrees plus, it's gonna be very difficult to fit solar panels because it's so steep it's hard to mount the panels safely. And if you've got a very shallow pitch roof, they're not going to be facing the sun as directly in winter, for example. Now in summer, the sun's very high in the sky, a low pitch is fine, but in winter you're gonna get less direct sun on those panels and therefore less generation. So ideally if you know the pitch of your roof, that's really helpful and around a 35 to 40 degree pitch is perfect. So here our roof is at 44 degrees, which is great. A little bit on the steep side compared to some of the roofs we do, but absolutely fine to generate solar a decent amount throughout the year.

Addressing Roof Shading

Now the other thing you want to consider when it comes to roof suitability is shading. You can have the biggest, most open, beautiful, excellent roof, but if it's totally shaded by tonnes of trees, then you're not going to get as much solar generation as if you had a nice open space around the roof with no shading at all. What happens is shade essentially blocks the amount of irradiance that's coming from the sun. So something like this big tree behind me, when the sun's behind that tree, It's going to block a lot of the sunlight that's falling on the panels and therefore it's going to reduce the output of the solar array. If you do have some shading it's not the end of the world. For example in this project we do have quite a lot of shading but we've put optimizers on all the panels to try and minimise the effect of shading on individual panels and what we've also done is just really oversized the array as big as possible to compensate for some of that shading. So it is possible to fit solar even if there's a significant amount of shading, but the less shading the better. And that's definitely something that any good installer will cheque and do a full shading map before they do your design and installation.

Understanding Your Roof Type and Condition

Identifying Your Roof Type

Now the second thing you really need to know in order to share this information with your installer to get an accurate quote and to get a properly designed solar system is what type of roof do you have? Now what do I mean by that? Well this is a tiled roof. So these particular tiles are what we call rosemary tiles or plain tiles. But there are so many different types of tiles out there. Or you may have, for example, a flat roof, you might have a metal standing seam roof, or if you've got a business, it might be a trapezoidal roof or some kind of corrugated roof. There are so many different types. So in order to be able to design the system properly, your installer is going to need to know what your roof tiles are in order to choose the right hooks, the right rails, the right fixings, and there's going to be a lot of structural things to cheque in terms of the layout of the roof, which we'll talk about a little bit later.

Now with tiled roofs in general, whether it's tiles like this or some other kind of tiles or slate, you're going to be looking at using a roof hook and rail system. That's where some tiles are lifted. Sometimes a little bit of modification has to be happening with the tiles, for example, cutting a little groove out to fit the hook underneath, or with these particular tiles, we lift them and we put some rubber hook stops underneath to stop the hooks from cracking the tiles. With the weight of the panels. With slates you're going to need special flashings but in general any kind of tiled or slated roof is going to require hooks and rails. The hooks screw into the roof trusses and then the tiles get resealed around those hooks to maintain the waterproof seal of the roof. That's really, really important. You don't ever want to see somebody offering to drill through your tiles in order to fix the system down or anything like that because you could have some serious issues with water ingress in the roof in that particular case. With a flat roof mount system it's slightly different. You'll have often a ballasted system, ballast being some blocks that weigh a decent amount and will hold the roof system down without having to screw into the flat roof which will often corrupt the waterproof membrane of that roof. There are also ground mount systems which if you don't have a suitable roof can be really great like at this particular project I'll show you in a bit. We've done a ground mount array in the grass or you can have a frame mounted array in the grass, in the garden, and that can work really well too.

Assessing Roof Condition

Now, the third thing you really need to know is what is the condition of your roof? For example, are there any broken or cracked tiles? Or worst case scenario, is the roof actually so dated that it needs replacing, in which case you might look at replacing the entire roof and putting integrated solar panels into the roof rather than mounting them on top. Now if you're very concerned about the condition of your roof it's probably good to get a roofer to cheque that over first. But all good solar installers will have a good idea about the condition of the roof when they come to do a site visit. We personally will get a drone up and we'll take high resolution pictures and videos of your roof before any installation and we'll cheque everything to see if there are any broken tiles or any areas of concern. Because it's better to get those repaired before you put the solar panels on and you certainly want to take care of that now rather than later when it could start to get water leaking into your roof.

Structural Integrity and Energy Consumption

Checking Roof Structural Integrity

Now the fourth thing you're going to need to know about is the structural integrity of your roof. So for example we're up here in the loft of the garage. Now we fitted 14 solar panels on this roof here and one of the first things that I cheque when it comes to doing a site survey once the customers confirm their quote is is the structural integrity of the roof okay? In this case, it's a nice new roof. The joists are all in really good condition. They're not the thickest, but these roofs are generally built to last and also over engineered to be able to take more weight than they actually need because of the inherent design of them. Now, if you've got an older roof with very old roof trusses or there's any concerns about the condition of the wood, maybe cracking or splitting, bowing in the roof, anything like that, then it's really worth to get a structural engineer to cheque things over before you proceed in having any solar installed. Also, if you've got a flat roof, they're often not designed to put any excess weight on, so you definitely need structural engineer calculations before getting any solar put onto a flat roof, because that can be really risky in terms of the amount of weight with the ballast that's going to go on.

Now, on a normal roof mounted system like this, each panel weighs about 20 to 25 kilos. So it can quickly build up 10 panels, that's 200 kilos. Here we're about 300 kilos just with the panels and then you've got the rails, the roof hooks, etc. We've probably put close to 400 kilos on this particular roof. So you want to know that the roof itself can take the weight, but also there's another thing to factor in, which is that the wind can actually pull the panels off the roof. So the panels and rails need to be securely screwed into the joists so that when the wind blows, the panels and hooks and things aren't actually blown off the roof. So it's not just about weight going onto the roof you've got to think about, it's off the roof as well. And that's why MCS gives specific guidelines about the distance that your solar panels should be from the edge of the roof. In general it's 400 millimetres border you should have all the way round the edge between the solar panel and the edge of the roof. And that's to help avoid this wind uplift catching the edge of the panels. And drawing them up.

So when doing a survey here, what I'll be looking at is the depth of these roof trusses, the width of them, the condition of them, the length of them. I would take all the measurements so that if we need to, we can send them off to a structural engineer to get all of the weight loadings checked. I'm also looking at the spacing between the roof trusses because that tells us how often we can fix a hook. So in this case, we've done hooks every two joists. So that's about every 1.2 meters. We've got about 600 spacings on these joists, which is absolutely perfect. But if you had them spread further apart, that might mean that you need to fix a hook to every single roof truss, and that would mean more expense in terms of roof hooks. And obviously, you've got to calculate all of these things in advance to have the right materials on site to do the job properly.

Ensuring Roof Membrane Integrity

But it's not just the condition of the wood and the structure of the roof that you need to think about, it's also this membrane here. We want to make sure that the membrane is in good condition. It's not easily going to tear or break. Sometimes if these are quite old, they can deteriorate. And we're going to have to get cables through your roof here in order to get the power out from the solar panels down to the inverter. So in this case, we use this PV Ultra DC cable. We run it through the flap here, and then we install an MCS approved deck tight roof flashing, which is a nice sealed flashing that has rubber grommets in it. And the DC cables pass through that, that means that the roof is completely sealed. Even though you've got cables penetrating through the roof, it's completely sealed. There's no water going to get in, no insects going to get in or anything like that.

Matching Solar System to Your Needs

Calculating Energy Usage

Another thing you absolutely need to know before you get solar installed is actually how much energy do you use to design the perfect solar system for you? It's important to match that with your requirements. For example, some people use huge amounts of energy, like at this particular property. They've got two big heat pumps. They've got an electric vehicle coming as well. They're going to use a lot of energy, so they're going to need a big solar PV system to match all of that energy use. Other people use very little energy, and therefore it doesn't really make sense to fit tonnes of solar panels when the compensation for that is not going to be very much because they're not going to use much of that energy themselves.

Now, there are various ways of factoring in payback for solar and things like that, whether it's self-consumption whether it's getting paid to export to the grid or using batteries to do energy trading. There are so many different ways to calculate the return on investment. But the most important factor that we always start with is how much energy are you using on site? Now, in order to know that, there are various ways. The simplest one is just to look at your energy bill. You'll have an annual estimated energy usage figure on your energy bill, usually on page two, and that will be in kilowatt hours. If you give that figure to your installer, they can plug that into their design software and that will help them to calculate how much solar you need and how much your self consumption figure would be based on that estimated annual usage. It's also important to think about any future additions that you might be planning to your property. For example, are you thinking of getting an electric vehicle in the next few years? Are you thinking of changing from a gas boiler or an oil boiler to a heat pump, which is electric? Are you thinking of getting a hot tub or a sauna? All of these things will increase your energy demand and therefore increase the size of solar PV or battery system that you might need in order to cover your energy use.

Using Half-Hourly Energy Data

Now there's a bonus tip here that I really like to share with you. In order to get the best and most accurate design, you can get your half hourly energy usage. You can download this as a CSV or comma separated value file. It's basically like an Excel sheet that has every half an hour how much power your house was using. If you can get a year's worth of data and send that to your installer, they can plug that into their design system and that's going to really help them to get the most accurate design. If you're not sure where to get it, ask your energy supplier. You can usually download it through your energy supplier's app or ask for them to send it to you.

The Role of Battery Storage

Benefits of Battery Storage

The other thing that you really need to consider is do you need battery storage or not? Now here at this property we fitted nearly 100 kilowatt hours of battery storage to pair with the solar to help the customer to get the most out of their system. Why is battery beneficial? Well, because the sun is only shining during the day and therefore you're only going to benefit from that solar energy when the sun's shining unless you fit a battery. Batteries are capable of storing excess solar energy during the day and then that allows you to use that stored energy overnight when the sun isn't shining so that rather than pulling power from the grid overnight, you can pull power from your batteries instead. There's other things that you can do which are really clever with batteries too. For example, in winter when your solar PV system is not generating as much as you need, you can charge the batteries up on a cheap overnight rate tariff and use that cheap energy to run the house during the day, therefore massively reducing your cost per kilowatt hour of energy. Batteries really now, in my opinion, are an essential unless you're using so much energy in the property that no matter how big your array is, you're always going to be using it straight away. For a lot of commercial installations that we do, there's no point in installing battery because they're using thousands of kilowatt hours every single month. And most of that is during the day when the sun's shining and they're sucking up all of that solar energy. So they have nothing excess to store in batteries. But for most domestic situations, a battery does make sense. The size of the battery will depend on various different factors. And I'll leave a link to a video up here which tells you how to size your battery correctly.

Advanced Battery Features

Now I have done a whole series of deep dive videos about battery storage so I'm not going to go into this in too much depth in this video but there are other benefits to battery storage as well. For example this Sig Energy system that we're fitting here provides full house backup in the event of a power cut meaning that if the power goes off from the gri

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: How do I know if my roof is suitable for solar?

Your roof's suitability for solar depends on several crucial factors: its orientation (south-facing in the UK is usually ideal, east-west is also very good for a long day of generation, while north-facing can yield about 60% of a south-facing roof's generation), the available space (ideally a rectangular shape for optimal panel fitting), its pitch (30-40 degrees is optimum, with very steep or very shallow pitches being less effective or harder to install on), and the level of shading from trees or other structures. Less shading is always better, but optimizers and oversized arrays can help compensate if some shading is present.

Q2: Why is it important for my installer to know my energy usage?

Understanding your energy usage is paramount for designing the perfect solar system. Your annual estimated energy usage (found in kilowatt-hours on your energy bill, usually page two) allows your installer to calculate the appropriate solar array size and estimate your self-consumption. It's also important to factor in any future additions like an electric vehicle, a heat pump, a hot tub, or a sauna, as these will increase your energy demand and necessitate a larger solar PV or battery system to meet your needs. For the most accurate design, you can provide a year's worth of half-hourly energy usage data from your energy supplier.

Q3: What are the benefits of adding battery storage to a solar system?

Battery storage significantly enhances the benefits of a solar PV system. It allows you to store excess solar energy generated during the day for use overnight when the sun isn't shining, reducing your reliance on grid power. In winter, when solar generation is lower, batteries can be charged on cheap overnight electricity tariffs, providing cost-effective energy for your home during the day. For most domestic situations, batteries are considered essential for maximizing the return on investment. Additionally, advanced battery systems, like the Sig Energy system mentioned, can provide full house backup in the event of a power cut.