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My house is well-suited for a solar installation. A large expanse of roof faces south, the roof is tilted 37 degrees up, and there are few sources of shade.
The main spine of the roof (center house in the above image) runs east-west, so the widest part of the roof faces directly south. However, it contains a large triangular dormer in the center of the south face, which means there is less roof space available for solar panels, and the dormer will shade half of the roof for the first part of the morning and last part of the afternoon.
There are two large mature maple trees (green circle in the above image) west of the house, which completely shade the roof in late afternoon in the summer.
There are two large evergreen trees (green oval in the above image) which slightly shade the lower part of the roof in mid afternoon in the winter.
However, these sources of shade only reach the roof at times when the sun is low anyway, so they will have a small effect on the overall energy production. For the middle 4-6 hours of the day (when the sun is most directly south), the roof is unshaded.
I started with a list of certified photovoltaic installers found on Focus on Energy's website. I read the websites of the installers closest to me, and then I emailed the top four candidates with a set of questions recommended by Focus on Energy. Based on these answers I requested a quote from two installers, and then selected H&H Solar Energy Services from Madison. Andrew Bangert oversaw my installation, with most of the work being performed by Chad Silverthorn and Ryan Herritz (both of H&H) with occasional assistance from Mike Bates (of H&H's Magaw division, New Berlin). H&H have installed a great deal of PV solar systems around Wisconsin, dating back to at least 2000, when I read about an installation Andrew did for Professor Jean Bahr in Madison.
H&H recommended Kyocera solar panels for their optimum combination of efficiency and affordability. The actual layout was designed to maximize the use of the available roof space (constrained by the geometry of each panel) and minimize the shading effect of the dormer. Sixteen of the larger 200W panels would surround the dormer, and four of the smaller 130W panels would occupy the narrow space in front of the dormer.
H&H began the installation on Friday, May 16th, 2008, by taking precise measurements of the roof and laying some conduit inside the house. During the next week they screwed Unirac rails into the roof rafters, mounted panels onto the rails, and wired the panels to each other and then through a weather-proof junction box and down a conduit to the basement, where they go through an inverter and out to the utility meters at the west side of the house. (For more information on the individual components, go to the Components page.)
Construction was completed and final inspections performed by the city of Wauwatosa electrical inspector on Tuesday, May 27th, 2008; however, it took nearly two weeks for representatives of my utility company We Energies to make their inspection and give approval for the system to be connected to their power grid. Finally the system became operational on Monday, June 9th, 2008.
H&H did a superb job with my installation. They were very considerate to minimize their impact on our life during the job, they were willing to take time to answer my many questions and consider my concerns and suggestions, they spent extra time up front planning the job to minimize later mistakes/rework, they went out of their way to make the installation look nice, and they handled the paperwork for the Focus on Energy and We Energies incentive programs. I highly recommend them to anyone considering a solar installation, but I caution you to contact them early, because their excellent track record makes them very popular, and so their work backlog can be high.