Solar Panel Installation and Soft Washing in Hazlet, NJ | Two-Thirds of the Array on the North Face

Hazlet, NJ · Client since May 2017

Roger in Hazlet has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since May of 2017. The solar array went up that August and we soft washed the house in April 2025.

Three faces, and one of them faces north

Thirty-nine panels went onto this roof, split across three faces, and the split is the interesting part.

Twelve panels sit on the front of the house at a 33-degree pitch, facing south-south-east. Three more sit on the same orientation at 32 degrees. The remaining twenty-four — nearly two-thirds of the array — are on the back of the house facing north-north-west.

On paper that looks like a mistake. The front faces run at 95 and 98 percent of their potential; the north face runs at 59. A rule of thumb would say do not put panels there at all.

The rule of thumb is wrong here, for two reasons. The first is that the back of the house is where the uninterrupted roof area is, and 24 panels producing at 59 percent still produce a great deal more than 24 panels that were never installed. The second is the equipment: every panel has its own SolarEdge optimizer, so each one reports and performs independently. On a string system, a weak face drags the whole string down toward its worst performer, and mixing orientations is genuinely a bad idea. With optimizers it is simply three groups of panels each doing what its own aspect allows.

The array is 11.31 kW of Hanwha 290-watt black-framed panels on Ecolibrium mounting, feeding a SolarEdge SE10000A HD Wave inverter with P320 optimizers. Estimated first-year production is 10,571 kWh, and the utility is JCP&L. It was commissioned on 4 August 2017.

4,483 square feet washed in April

On 18 April 2025 we came back and soft washed 4,483 square feet of the exterior. The work is done by the solution rather than by pressure: a sodium hypochlorite and surfactant mix is applied at low pressure, left to kill the algae and mildew growing on the surface, and rinsed away. Pressure alone lifts the staining and leaves the growth rooted in place, so it returns within a season.

Questions from Hazlet homeowners

Soft washingWhy does a house look dirty again a few years after it was washed?

Because the exterior is exposed continuously to moisture, pollen, dirt, spores and airborne deposits, and cleaning does not stop new contamination arriving. How quickly it returns depends on shade, landscaping, humidity, how close the water is, how the roof drains and which way the house faces.

SolarWhich electrical code applies to a solar installation?

New Jersey currently adopts the 2023 National Electrical Code. The articles that matter for solar are 690 for photovoltaic systems, 705 for sources interconnected with the grid, 706 where there is battery storage, and 750 for energy management systems where applicable.

SolarHow much does shade from mature Hazlet trees affect production?

Shade can materially reduce production, particularly when it falls during the highest-production hours. Module-level electronics such as microinverters and optimizers reduce the effect of partial shading, but they cannot create sunlight where there is none. Significant shade should be modelled before any annual production figure is quoted.