Some solar owners have no idea how much there solar is producing, or if it is working at all.

According to the clean energy council almost 1.25 million small-scale solar power systems were installed across the country by the end of 2013, meaning that around 3.1 million Australians now live or work beneath a set of solar panels. But how do any of these homeowners actually know if their solar is working?

Solar power is the most beneficial investments that a homeowner can make to power there home, however the type of system and monitoring ability can make a dramatic difference.

Once solar has been added to a rooftop the biggest assumption made by solar owners is that now they can set and forget. This actually couldn’t be further fro m the truth with rates of DC solar related fires, system failures, and panel damage skyrocketing. Some of the more common problems owners are facing is what is called performance downtime. This is caused by failures due to product defects or malfunctions, poor installation and environmental effects such as high grid voltage, thunder storms etc. These issues all contribute to thousands of solar systems throughout Australia not performing to their maximum potential, a problem that is most likely unknown to the owners. An American study last year actually highlighted this issue and found that 54 of 255 homes experienced issues, lowering the output and production of their system.