Charles Griswold

Residential solar is one of the largest discretionary purchases an American household will make — typically $20,000 to $50,000 before incentives — and the information available to buyers ranges from genuinely helpful to outright misleading.

I started Solar Homeowner Guide to publish the kind of plain-language reviews and walk-throughs I wish I had access to when I first started researching residential PV: install cost ranges, production expectations, payback math, and honest write-ups of the federal and state incentive programs that change every year.

I'm not affiliated with any installer, panel manufacturer, or financing company, and I'm not a financial advisor. I don't accept paid placements. The site is supported by display ads (AdSense) only, so I'm free to call out the parts of the industry that are working and the parts that aren't.

The numbers I publish come from public datasets and from living with my own residential system. Sources include:

• Publicly available state-level incentive program reports
• Federal EnergyStar and NREL public solar datasets
• My own home's production and consumption data, which I monitor directly (40 panels, two Tesla inverters)
• Public IRS guidance on the Residential Clean Energy Credit (the 30% federal ITC)

Where a number is an estimate, I label it as such. Where I'm citing my own home's experience rather than a broader dataset, I say that too. If a guide on this site looks like it might be selling you something, it's a mistake — flag it via the contact form and I'll fix it.