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MAD, Making a Difference…
What makes these homes so special?
You need a few things to profitably and reliably use solar panels in the suburbs…they need to be aimed directly at the sun, they need to be easy to install, they need to be out of public view and you need rooftop square footage.
The easiest, least expensive way to install a solar panel is flat on the roof but do this on most homes and they’re aimed at anything but the sun! You can custom build angled mounts that will aim the solar panels anywhere you want but they’re heavy, expensive, take up space and aren’t nice to look at!
Home’s that offer flat mount, direct aim (FMDA) roof surfaces are by far the easiest homes to work with and therefore the most sought after!
But we also have to work with HOAs and while they typically can’t abolish the use of solar technologies, they can tell you how and where to install it. More and more HOAs are implementing flat mount, rear of home solar panel requirements in order to maintain neighborhood aesthetics, ultimately limiting solar energy production in the suburbs!
But all this is worthless if you don’t have room for solar panels. For the average home to be fully self-sustaining, the solar square footage will need to be at least 25% of the home’s living square footage. This kind of space can be hard to find as many homes have complicated roof lines or are shaded.