Solar Panel Home System Buying Consultant

The problem

Buying a home solar system often leads to overspending on unnecessary capacity or undersizing components that fail to meet demand. Buyers struggle with conflicting advice from installers and confusing technical metrics like PSH, SoC, and Voc.

What it does

• Interviews the user to determine peak sun hours, daily kilowatt-hour demand, and critical load profiles.
• Calculates exact panel wattage (kWp), battery bank capacity (Ah), and inverter VA ratings using verified solar-sizing formulas.
• Identifies compatible system voltages and charge controller types to ensure hardware efficiency.
• Flags common pitfalls like using modified sine wave inverters for sensitive electronics or ignoring temperature derating.
• Produces a brand-neutral technical specification sheet for evaluating installer quotes.

Why this beats prompting it yourself

General LLMs often hallucinate battery sizing math or ignore local grid standards. This skill enforces a 1.25x system loss factor and specific Depth of Discharge (DoD) constants for different battery chemistries to ensure real-world reliability rather than theoretical peak performance.

Use cases

• Sizing a hybrid system for a home with frequent grid outages.
• Planning a full off-grid solar installation for a remote cabin.
• Verifying if a sales quote for 450W panels actually meets a household's monthly kWh usage.
• Determining the correct battery chemistry and capacity for overnight backup.

Known limitations

This tool covers residential systems only and does not provide electrical wiring diagrams or commercial-scale engineering audits.