Is your solar making as much as it should?
A system can lose power quietly for months. The app still shows numbers, so nothing looks broken, but the bill creeps up. The production check tells you whether your system is on track.
The problem
Most owners only find out something's wrong when a bill arrives. A tripped breaker, a failed panel optimizer or new shade from a growing tree can cut production by a third, and the monitoring app rarely says so in plain words.
What the tool does
You enter your panels' size, tilt and direction once. SolarTriage estimates what a system like yours should make each month using typical-year weather data for your area, then compares that with what yours actually made. Each month gets a plain label: On track, Worth a look, or Likely a problem.
If it's a problem, it points you to the matching troubleshooting steps, with each step marked by who should do it.
How we know what your system should make
SolarTriage estimates expected production with PVWatts, a free calculator built by the National Laboratory of the Rockies (formerly NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory), the U.S. Department of Energy's national lab for solar and energy research. PVWatts uses your system's size, tilt, and direction, along with typical-year weather data for your area, to estimate what each month should produce in an average year. We compare that estimate with what your system actually made. Real weather changes from year to year, so one cloudy month can fall short on its own. We look for patterns that point to a problem.
Sample result
Example system, 7.2 kW, south-facing
Example| Month | Expected | Actual | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| March | 720 kWh | 702 kWh | 98% · On track |
| April | 810 kWh | 796 kWh | 98% · On track |
| May | 880 kWh | 861 kWh | 98% · On track |
| June | 900 kWh | 612 kWh | 68% · Likely a problem |
June came in at 68% of expected, about 288 kWh missing. Next step: check whether your inverter shows an error code, and look at the daily graph to find the day the drop started.
Made-up numbers for illustration. Not a real member or a real bill.
Free tip
Check on a clear day, around noon
Open your monitoring app on a sunny day between 11 and 1. A healthy home system usually shows somewhere near 60 to 80 percent of its panel size in kilowatts. A 7 kW system reading 1 kW at noon under clear skies is worth a closer look.
One cloudy week isn't a problem. A drop that stays low for several sunny days is.
Be first in line when it opens
SolarTriage is opening to owners by invitation. The working tools are for signed-in members; this page only shows a sample.
Request an invite