The easiest way to tell if your solar panels are working is to check the colour of the lights on your solar inverter during daylight hours. Solid green means it is generating. Red, orange or flashing means a fault.
Most people ask this question too late. An IEA Photovoltaic Power Systems Programme report on residential monitoring found faults on small systems often go undiscovered for weeks or months. They usually surface when the quarterly bill arrives and the numbers do not add up. Few small systems are monitored properly. Where they are, the owner only learns what the inverter itself can report.
Run the check below now rather than waiting for a bill. It takes five minutes, and there is a clear sequence to follow if something looks wrong.
How can I check if my solar panels are working correctly?
Run through all three checks below rather than relying on just one. Each one tells you something slightly different, and together they separate a genuine fault from a monitoring glitch.
The 3-point solar health check
1. Check the inverter
Find your inverter box, usually mounted in the garage, on an external wall or in a meter box. Look for the LED marked “Normal”, “Operation” or “Status”.
- Green: generating normally
- Red or orange: fault detected
- Flashing: usually a grid or communication issue
- Blank: no power reaching the unit, which is normal after dark
2. Check your monitoring app
Open the app tied to your inverter brand, such as Enphase Enlighten, SolarEdge mySolarEdge, Fronius Solar.web or Sungrow iSolarCloud. Look at current production, shown in kW. If that figure is above zero during daylight, your panels are producing.
3. Check your smart meter
Toggle through the screens on your digital meter. Look for a negative figure or an arrow pointing towards the grid. That tells you the system is exporting surplus power, which answers the related question most people have: how do I know if my solar panels are sending power to the grid?
Try this now
Walk out to your inverter. Is the screen awake and the light green? If yes, your system is fine and any low production reading is more likely a weather or app sync issue. If no, move to the reset sequence below.
How to read the results
| What you see | What it means |
|---|---|
| Healthy daytime production, green light | System is working normally |
| Zero production, green light | Grid supply issue, meter lag or app sync delay |
| Zero production, red light | System has tripped or faulted |
| Production well below normal for the season | Possible shading, soiling or a single underperforming string |
Do not panic at a low number. Production drops on overcast days. A run of humid, hazy Central Coast mornings can knock output down noticeably before it picks up after lunch. Compare against the same month last year in your app, not against your best ever day.
How do I reboot my solar system, and where is the reset button?
There is rarely a single reset button on a solar inverter. To reset your system you perform a hard reboot, which means switching off the AC and DC isolators in the correct order, waiting five minutes, then switching everything back on in reverse.
The safe shutdown and restart sequence
- Locate the Solar Supply Main Switch in your main switchboard. Flick it to OFF.
- Locate the AC isolator, usually a red switch mounted next to the inverter. Flick it to OFF.
- Locate the DC isolator, often mounted directly under the inverter. Flick it to OFF.
- Wait a full five minutes so the capacitors inside the inverter can drain.
- Turn everything back ON in reverse order: DC first, then AC, then the Solar Supply Main Switch.
The mistake most people make
Switching the DC isolator off first, while the system is still under load, can cause arcing inside the isolator. Always kill the AC side first. That single detail is the difference between a clean reboot and a damaged isolator, and faulty DC isolators are one of the more common repair jobs we see on older systems.
This is not a theoretical risk. Water ingress into DC isolators was a common enough failure point that AS/NZS 5033:2021 changed the requirements, replacing rooftop DC isolators with disconnection points in most installations. In the Clean Energy Regulator’s most recent inspection round, unsafe ratings caused by DC isolators dropped to zero for 2023 installations.
If any switch feels hot, looks discoloured, or you can see water sitting inside the isolator housing, stop and call an electrician instead.
How to tell the reset worked
Give the inverter two to five minutes to wake up. You will usually hear a click as the relays engage, and the operation light should return to solid green. Production should reappear in your app within about fifteen minutes. If the same fault code comes back straight away, the reboot has not fixed the underlying problem and you need a technician.
Who can check if my solar panels are working properly, and how much does it cost?
If a hard reset does not clear the fault, the next step is a diagnostic test by a Clean Energy Council accredited installer. In Australia, CEC accreditation is the qualification that matters, and it is a requirement for any warranty or rebate related work.
There is a reason not to shrug off a system that keeps underperforming after a reset. The Clean Energy Regulator runs an annual inspection program on randomly selected rooftop systems across Australia. In the 2023–24 program, roughly one in four systems inspected was rated substandard: 24.6 per cent of 2022 installations and 24.4 per cent of 2023 installations. Substandard does not mean dangerous. It means the installation falls short of key clauses in the standards in a way that may lead to premature equipment failure. The usual culprits were wiring, earthing, panel mounting and the disconnection points.
Unsafe systems were much rarer, at 1.71 per cent of 2022 installs and 0.45 per cent of 2023 installs. But in NSW alone, across the full life of the program to June 2024, 2,143 of 10,440 inspected systems were rated substandard. If your system has never been independently checked and something feels off, a diagnostic inspection is not paranoia.
| What you get | DIY app check | Professional diagnostic |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Free | Roughly $150 to $300 |
| Time | 5 minutes | 1 to 2 hours |
| What it tells you | Whether the system is on or off | Voltage across individual panels, wiring and isolator faults, inverter firmware status, one section of panels quietly underperforming |
What to do next
- Check whether your system is still inside its workmanship warranty period. If it is, the call out may cost you nothing.
- Photograph the inverter screen, including any error code, before you call. It speeds up the diagnosis considerably.
- Book a diagnostic inspection if an error code is showing, or if production has dropped by more than about 20 per cent against the same period last year with no obvious explanation.
Talk to Central Coast Energy
Central Coast Energy is a CEC accredited installer, a NETCC Approved Seller and SAA accredited, and we service the Central Coast, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle and the Hunter Valley. If your inverter is showing a fault code, or the numbers have not looked right for a while and a reset has not fixed it, get in touch with our team and we will get someone out to look at it. Every system we install carries a 10 year workmanship warranty.
Is 10kW of solar enough to run a house?
Yes. A 10kW system generates somewhere in the range of 35 to 40kWh per day on average, which comfortably covers a large four or five bedroom home, including running ducted air conditioning through the day and charging an EV.
The more useful question is what to add next.
Is it better to have more solar panels or more batteries?
Scenario A: high daytime usage. You run air conditioning during the day, have a pool pump, or work from home. Your consumption lines up with your generation.
Verdict: add more panels. You will use the extra output directly, which is worth far more than exporting it.
Scenario B: high evening usage and a low feed in tariff. The house is empty until 5pm, then everything switches on at once.
Verdict: add a battery. You are currently exporting cheap power during the day and buying it back at peak rates.
How many solar panels do I need for a 10kWh battery?
You need at least 6kW of true surplus daytime generation to fill a 10kWh battery reliably, which works out to roughly 15 to 20 modern panels. Surplus is the key word. If your household already consumes most of what the array produces, adding a battery without adding panels will leave it half charged most days. Our guide to what size solar battery you need walks through the sizing in more detail.
Solar panel maintenance, lifespan and cleaning
A modern solar panel has a working life of about 25 to 30 years. Output degrades slowly over that period, typically in the order of half a per cent a year, so a panel installed today should still be producing around 85 per cent of its original output after two decades.
The honest drawbacks
The biggest limitation of solar is grid dependence. A standard grid connected system shuts down automatically during a blackout, whether the sun is shining or not. That is a safety requirement, not a fault, and it protects line workers repairing the network. Only a system with a battery and correctly configured backup circuit will keep running through an outage.
The second limitation is weather. Output tracks sunlight, so a week of heavy cloud will show up clearly in your app. That is normal and not a reason to book a service call.
Cleaning schedule
Clean your panels every 6 to 12 months.
Coastal properties generally sit at the shorter end of that range. The IEA’s monitoring research lists systems near the sea, alongside dusty areas, low tilt angles and roofs under bird or bat flight paths, as the specific situations where soiling builds up faster than rain can clear it. Salt film is the culprit near the water, and a low tilt makes it worse because rain runs off rather than sheeting down the glass.
The signature of a soiling problem is distinctive: a gradual decline over several months, then a partial jump back up after heavy rain. If your app shows that shape, you have a cleaning issue rather than a failing panel.
Note the word partial. Rain shifts loose dust, but it evaporates and leaves mineral deposits behind, so output usually recovers some of the way and then stalls. A run of rain that does not return you to where you were last year is a sign the buildup needs more than weather.
A rinse from the hose is not a fix either. It moves the loose material and leaves behind the salt film, tree sap, bird droppings and mineral streaking that are doing most of the damage. A professional clean uses purified deionised water and a soft brush, which lifts all of it without scratching the glass or voiding your panel warranty.
Two rules if you do anything yourself. Never get onto the roof, and never spray cold water onto hot glass. Clean from the ground with an extendable brush on a cool, overcast morning, then watch your production for a week. If the numbers barely move, book a professional solar panel clean.
