The vocabulary the solar industry uses on you, in plain English. Anything you'll hear in a sales pitch should be defined here. If it isn't, the term might be doing work the underlying concept doesn't.
Tap any term to expand its definition. Most entries link back to the Solar Myths series where the mechanic is walked in depth.
Purchase Structures & Sales Mechanics · Tax & Incentives · Equipment · Process & Permitting · Utility & Bills Purchase Structures & Sales Mechanics APR (advertised vs. effective) +
Bait-and-switch +
Buyout +
Cash price vs. financed price +
Dealer fee +
Door-knocker / D2D +
Escalator clause +
FMV buyout +
Grossing up +
Lead aggregator / Marketplace +
Lease (Solar Lease) +
Lease assumption +
Markup / Origination fee +
PPA (Power Purchase Agreement) +
Pre-Paid Lease +
Pre-Paid PPA +
Prepayment penalty +
Re-amortization clause +
Solar loan +
Stimulus program (euphemism) +
TPO (Third-Party Owned) +
UCC-1 lien +
Tax & Incentives §25D (residential Investment Tax Credit) +
§48E (commercial Clean Electricity Investment Credit) +
§50(a) recapture +
Austin Energy residential solar rebate +
AVL (Approved Vendor List) +
Domestic content adder +
DSIRE database +
ITC (Investment Tax Credit) +
Low-income community bonus +
MACRS +
NPV of the tax stack +
OBBBA +
Placed in service +
Equipment AC vs. DC +
Array +
Backup +
Balance of System (BoS) +
Battery (capacity) +
Critical loads panel +
Depth of discharge (DoD) +
Hybrid inverter +
Inverter +
kW vs. kWh +
Microinverter +
Module / Panel +
Mounting / Racking +
String inverter +
Tier 1 module (BloombergNEF) +
Process & Permitting AHJ (Authority Having Jurisdiction) +
Equipment warranty +
Master electrician of record +
O&M (Operations and Maintenance) +
PE seal (Professional Engineer) +
Production warranty +
PTO (Permission to Operate) +
Scope of work +
Solar orphan +
TDLR (Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation) +
TECL (Texas Electrical Contractor License) +
Workmanship warranty +
Utility & Bills Bidirectional meter +
Buyback rate +
Demand charge +
Interconnection +
NEM (Net Energy Metering) +
Time-of-use (TOU) +
VoS (Value of Solar) tariff +