Show HN: My solar died for 6 months, so I built a watchdog

A home solar owner showed off SunRanker, a free tool that checks your panels every day and emails you if something stops working. The pitch is pure homeowner nightmare fuel: their solar setup allegedly underperformed for six months before they realized it, so they built a watchdog to catch problems fast and explain them in plain English. But the comments instantly turned into a full-on courtroom drama over one question: can solar really “break quietly”?

That’s where the crowd got spicy. One skeptic basically laughed at the premise, arguing that if your system stops doing its job, your battery level and power numbers should make it painfully obvious. Another took the ultimate anti-hobbyist stance: this is exactly why they’d rather just pay the electric company and never think about it again. In other words, for some readers, the real bug isn’t solar failure—it’s having to babysit your own roof.

Then came the veterans. One commenter wanted the site to scream FREE louder, while others questioned what this tool actually does that existing solar apps don’t already handle with texts and alerts. And the old-school flex was glorious: one longtime solar user rolled in to say remote monitoring has existed forever and their battered system has survived 15 years, with the only memorable warning being, essentially, “that’s not a hum… it’s sizzling.” So yes, the product got attention—but the real entertainment was watching the internet argue over whether this solves a genuine hidden problem or just reinvents a button people already had.