Solar Panel Installation and Roofing Installation in Sicklerville, NJ | Then 28 Panels and a Charger

Sicklerville, NJ · Client since May 2024

George Arthur has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since May of 2024, when he bought a new roof. The solar array followed in October and both were finished within days of each other the following February.

3,000 square feet, stripped to the deck

The old shingles came off down to the sheathing and left with the dumpster. Deck protection went over the exposed sheathing, then a GAF Timberline HDZ system in Hickory carrying a 50-year warranty, aluminum drip edge along 310 feet of rakes, eaves and valleys, and a ridge vent along the peak. The roof was finished on 3 February 2025 and the panels went on four days later.

28 panels and 12.88 kW

Twenty-eight REC 460 watt panels came to 12.88 kW on Snap-N-Rack mounting, finished on 7 February 2025, running into a SolarEdge SE10000H Energy Hub inverter with an optimizer on every panel. Critter guard was fitted around the array at the same time, closing the gap under the panels where squirrels and birds otherwise nest. Atlantic City Electric is the utility and the first year was designed for about 15,085 kWh.

The estimate depends on one tree coming down

The contract states it plainly: the production estimates assume the tree at the southern corner of the house is removed. That belongs on the page rather than buried in the paperwork, because it is the difference between a figure the household can hold us to and a figure that quietly stops applying. A shade model describes the sky as it is expected to be. The southern corner is the worst possible place for a tree on a solar house, it is the direction the array is working hardest in, and unlike every other variable in the design it gets worse every year on its own.

A car charger wired to the inverter, not the panel

An EV charger went in with the array. It is its own unit, but it connects to the inverter rather than to the electrical service panel, which is what lets it charge the car directly from the roof through the day and fall back to the grid after dark. A charger fed from the service panel has no idea whether the sun is up; it is simply another load on the house. This one sits on the solar side, so a good afternoon has somewhere useful to go.

Roof first, then solar, five months apart

This household did the two jobs in the right order for the least glamorous reason: it bought the roof it needed, and came back for the array afterwards. That is worth noting because the sequence usually gets decided by whoever is selling. An array is bolted down for twenty-five years and more, so a roof near the end of its life underneath one becomes a second job later — panels off, roof on, panels back. Buying the roof first, on its own merits, removed that possibility before the panels were ever specified.