Nova Navitas TOO designs and installs rooftop solar for private homes in Besagash and the suburbs around Almaty. The panels work, and in this sunny corner of the country they work well for much of the year.
The advertising for this trade tends to promise something else — zero bills, quick payback, free electricity. That version does not survive a January in the Almaty foothills, and a household that bought it will be disappointed by a system that is performing exactly as it should. So this page starts with the year as it actually is.
Each of these deserves its own conversation. Select one.
Shorter days and a lower sun reduce generation substantially between November and February. Snow sitting on the panels stops it almost entirely until it slides or is cleared. And the haze that settles over the Almaty basin in cold, still weather cuts the light that reaches the roof.
A system sized to cover your January needs will be oversized for the rest of the year, and one sized for the year will not cover January. There is no size that does both, and a proposal claiming otherwise has not looked at a winter.
Solar pays for itself by displacing electricity you would otherwise buy. Where household tariffs are low, each kilowatt-hour displaced is worth less, and the years needed to recover the installation cost stretch accordingly.
That does not make it a bad decision. It makes it a long one. Tariffs change, equipment costs change, and a house that uses a lot of daytime electricity — pumps, cooling, a workshop, somebody home all day — recovers its cost faster than one that is empty until evening.
Whether a system may be connected, whether surplus may be exported, and on what terms, are decided by the rules in force and by your local distribution company — not by the installer, and not by what a neighbour was told a few years ago.
Establish the connection position before installation, not after. A system designed around selling surplus that cannot be sold is a system designed around the wrong economics.
A roof carrying panels must carry them through heavy snow load and through the wind that comes down off the mountains. It must also stay attached through ground movement — the Almaty region is seismically active, and panels and racking are heavy objects above the rooms where people sleep.
That means assessing the roof structure before anything is designed, using fixings suited to the roof type, and not taking an installation cheaper by skipping either step.
A battery lets you use daytime generation in the evening and gives some protection during an outage. It also adds substantially to cost, has a finite number of cycles, and will need replacing well within the life of the panels.
For many homes the honest recommendation is panels without a battery at first, adding storage later if the need is real and prices have moved. Where power cuts are frequent and disruptive, the answer may be different — which is a reason to discuss your actual situation, not a reason to buy one by default.
From us or from anybody else. An installer who resists writing any of these down has told you what the verbal version was worth.
Orientation, shading, roof structure and condition, assessed on site before any design is drawn.
A system sized to your consumption and your roof, with generation shown month by month rather than as a single annual number.
Racking and fixings chosen for snow load, wind and seismic conditions, installed to the roof type you actually have.
Working through the connection process with the network company, and telling you plainly where it stands.
Where insulation or equipment changes would save more than panels would generate, we will say so before quoting for panels.
Inspection, cleaning and inverter checks — and advice on clearing snow safely, which mostly means not climbing on to an icy roof.
For most homes around Almaty, no, and particularly not in winter. It reduces the bill across the year, heavily in summer and modestly in the darkest months. A proposal promising a zero bill year-round should be read with considerable suspicion.
That depends on your consumption, your tariff and the installed cost, and we will not publish a figure that would be wrong for most readers. We will calculate it for your house, show the assumptions, and show what happens to it if tariffs stay flat.
Not in the months you need heat most, for the reasons shown in the chart at the top of this page. Solar panels are generally the wrong tool for winter heating here, and energy-efficiency measures usually do more for a heating bill than generation does.
Panels are usually installed at an angle that helps snow slide off, and dark panels in sunshine clear faster than you might expect. What we do not recommend is climbing onto a snow-covered or icy roof to clear them. A few days of lost winter generation is worth far less than a fall.
No. We design and install; we do not lend. If you are financing an installation, compare the cost of the borrowing against the payback — a system that pays back over many years is not improved by borrowing at a rate that consumes the savings.
Send the address, a photograph of the roof and a year of electricity bills if you have them. We will tell you honestly whether solar makes sense for your house before anyone visits — and sometimes the honest answer is to insulate first.
A photograph and a year of consumption tell us more than any conversation. The first assessment costs nothing.