On a national basis, the vast majority of residential solar systems are roof mounted. It makes sense. It is space that is not being used, and the roof often has the best orientation to the sun’s path, and is the most shade-free area on the property.
But in many cases, we encourage customers to at least consider a ground mount system. The two main reasons are:
- You can precisely orient the array to the sun path – allowing for maximum annual production.
- If your array is part of an emergency power system (battery backup) and you get a big snow, it is easy to get the snow off of the modules, which is very important for an emergency power system.
For some customers, a ground mount is not a good option. For example, you may have a roof with a great orientation and pitch that is better than, or as good as, any ground mount system.