Veranda Solar makes affordable, beautiful solar panels that hang out your window or clip to gutters and balconies. Our panels easy installation saves you half the cost of traditional panels. They are plug and play. They snap together. Now you can make the decision to go solar and hook up your house, all in a single afternoon.
Now you too can invest in your own personal green energy future.
Veranda Solar was selected for second prize at the PICNIC Green Challenge and won 100,000 Euros to start our venture on September 28, 2008! We're using our funding to refine the engineering of our product and to get it ready for mass production. For more information, photos and video of the prize, please click here.
We've also been reviewed by the New York Times, Forbes, the BBC, Radio Netherlands, Huffington Post, Salon.com and many other blogs and news stations. Please Google search us to find out more!
Veranda Solar was launched at Stanford University in spring of 2008 by Emilie Fetscher and Capra J'neva, who developed their unique panels for their product design thesis. We are currently in a start-up phase and hope to offer panels and flexible inverters on the market in early 2010. To be waitlisted for panels, or get involved with the company, please hit contact and send us your details.
We are still doing product development, this means that any details we give you are subject to change. Right now we are designing our panels to be 60 watts and our inverters to accept loads up to 600 watts.
Yes, that's the great thing about Veranda Solar. Start with a system that fits your budget and add to it as you're able to afford new panels. Our simple, web-based interface will help you understand how much you are generating and using and how to meet your goals for powering appliances within your house.
Every house is different. Each person uses a different amount of power, and they live in different climates that have different amounts of sun. The same panel will generate more electricity in Arizona than Oregon. When our panels are available for purchase, we'll have a calculator you can use on our site, so that you can sit down with your power bills, tell us where you live, and we can tell you how many panels would generate the power for your home.
Please be aware that we optimized our panels for people interested in starting small and growing their system over time, intending that our customers will generate part of their power usage, not necessarily all of it. While this is certainly possible with our easy-mount systems, many people don't have the roof or wall space to do so. If you choose to generate more than your home uses, you need to make sure to contact your utility before hooking up the system so that they can install a net meter. This allows your house to feed power onto the grid when the sun is shining, and to use power from the grid at night.
Depends on what size of system you build. Think about it this way: each panel is 60 watts. Say it sits in the sun for 5 hours each day. That's about what you'd get if you average the output from a whole day in California or Arizona. That means each panel generates 300 watt hours per day. So if you use a regular 100 watt incandescent lightbulb, you'd use the power your panel generated in 3 hours of running that lightbulb. 100 watts x 3 hours = 300 watt hours! If you change your lightbulbs to equivalent compact fluorescents (23 watts/each), you could run 4 of them for 3.2 hours each! Think about that the next time you buy an incandescent lightbulb! If you're so cool that you have LED lightbulbs...you'd be able to run 10 of them for 3 hours.
When our product releases, you'll be able to calculate your system size by choosing which appliances you'd like to run with our special calculator. Once you've installed it, you'll also be able to see which appliances in your house you are running, on our cool web interface.
While we intend to make an off-grid product in the future, we are launching with a product intended for use on the power grid. Our systems do not contain batteries. You will still be able to use our panels with a battery system, but you will need to carefully size your system, and choose a power regulator, batteries and an inverter to use with them. While you may enjoy our panel's easy mounting system, we might recommend that you use another company's product for your off-grid installation at this time.
We are still developing our product and will provide a projected release date as we move into manufacturing.
Yes, eventually. We are initially releasing our product in the US, and intend to expand distribution globally as soon as possible. We are designing panels and inverters that will work with 220 power and each country’s power system. We have a global network of distributors and are eager to get power to people in every country. We will also develop special products for off-grid and for people with extremely limited budgets to help provide light, power and income in small villages. We plan to release our specialized off-grid products by 2012.
You can add additional inverters to your system. Up to three inverters can be used for each household circuit. Our inverters are extremely safe, and won't allow you to overload your circuit, so you don't have to understand your house's power system to be able to use them. Just plug them in like a regular appliance.
Yes. We are designing our systems to attach conveniently to balconies and window sills. We specifically want renters to be able to choose solar without worrying about damaging their building.
Solar panels are designed to work in direct sunlight. Shaded panels drastically cut system performance, though we have optimized ours so that if one is in the shade it has less of an effect on the system. But you should try to place them so they will receive direct sunlight all day long. If your apartment faces north, we recommend you try a different approach to clean power, such as buying wind power from your utility. If you live in a cloudy climate, you will still be able to collect sunlight, but you will create less energy from it. The good news about clouds is that it doesn't matter as much if your panel is directly facing the sun, because the clouds diffuse the light. But in general they will make less energy than they will on a clear day. Rainy weather helps keep the panels clean. If you live in a warm dusty climate, you may need to clean your panels so that the dust particles won't shade the cells. Our smart inverter will help you keep track of when your panels need cleaning.
Yes. If you start with a Veranda Solar power system and want to add a traditional system later, you can simply add it to your house. You would size your traditional system to offset any power use not covered by the Veranda Solar power system. You can also add Veranda Solar panels and inverters to create a full-size system. Just be aware that if you produce more power than you use, you must ask your local utility to install a net meter so that you can be paid for any electricity you generate.
Yes. The Veranda system is additive and will not conflict with another system.
While we cannot guarantee against theft, our engineers are experts in making theft-resistant attachments. The panels will have special locking devices that make them difficult to remove. We recommend placing panels so that they cannot be easily tampered with.
The inverter logs this information and presents it for on-line viewing. You can use tools on our website and through networking sites or cell phone applications to see how much electricity you are generating for your home and to understand the collective impact you are having with other Veranda Solar generators in your area or country.
Yes, everyone using our product is eligible for federal tax credits. State tax credits vary widely, but we are working hard to assure that you will receive the most credit possible for your purchase with the least hassle. We hope to build credits into a lower purchase price and to eliminate paperwork necessary to apply for credits. We also hope that our starting system costs, well below the 36K required for a traditional system, help people to purchase solar without relying on tax credit programs.
Each complete Veranda Solar system comes with: 1) Photovoltaic panel; 2) Mounting brackets; 3) All required cables; 3) “Plug-&-Play” power inverter. Additional panels can be added for a lower price.
Like all solar panels, ours are designed to resist normal wind loads. We recommend people unplug their panels and bring them indoors during hurricanes or major hailstorms, something you could not do with ordinary solar panels. This is one major advantage of our easy-install systems in climates that are subject to strong storms. The system will have a 25 year warranty for outdoor use.
We aim to produce our panels for between $6 to $10 per watt for a complete system ready to be installed by the home user. As we are not yet manufacturing, these are only projections and are subject to change. Please be aware when comparing to other panel systems that solar energy is usually priced by the panel cost alone (i.e., $5-6/watt is for the panel only and does not include inverter and installation). Also, because we are designing panels and inverters to work together, the overall usable power output from our system will be higher than many other systems available.
The exact size, shape and weight are in development. We’ll let you know before releasing the final product. We can tell you that we are making it to be something that most people can easily lift and carry on their own.
No, not without the addition of a battery. Once plugged into a wall socket the unit will slow down your meter or run it backwards. You'll either use up the energy in your own home, or if you have a big enough system or use little enough power, you'll feed power into the electrical grid, using it as a battery. During the day it will run your net meter backwards, and at night when you're using more electricity, the meter will run forwards. In the end, you may end up using all the power in your system, only oweing a little to the utility, or generating more than you used. Some states require utilities to pay the extra back to you, but you must make sure to contact the utility if you plan to generate more than you use.
Anything that plugs into your wall.
Veranda Solar is offering affordable products by taking existing technologies and allowing people to start small and create systems they can add to over time. When you consider that the average solar power system in the U.S. costs $36,000, and it is generally at least $10,000 for a "small" system, our starting prices around $600-800 for a system including inverter make it possible for more people to adopt solar. Our prices will be similar to the installed cost of traditional solar systems. The prices are more attractive the more panels you add to your inverter. Solar is still more expensive than electricity from the grid, but it pays itself off over time.