October is when the solar question starts following me around job sites. Monsoon season is behind us, mornings finally feel like Tucson again, and somewhere between the tear-off and the first panel going up, a homeowner points at their roof and asks, “If we go with a metal roof, can we still put solar on it?” I’m Ivan Infante, owner of Kino Roofing, and my answer is always the same: yes, and a metal roof is about the best thing you can put under solar panels. The details are where people get tripped up, so here’s how it actually works.
The short answer is that a standing seam metal roof is the easiest roof in Tucson to mount solar on, because the panels clamp onto the raised seams without drilling a single hole through the roof. Other metal profiles work too, they just need different hardware. Either way, the roof underneath has to be planned with solar in mind, and that’s the part our metal roofing team in Tucson handles before any solar company shows up: seam profile, panel orientation, flashing around vents, and leaving clean, open roof planes where an array will actually produce.
Why do solar installers love standing seam metal?
Most roofs need holes. On shingle or tile, the solar crew drives lag bolts through your roof deck at every mounting point and seals each one. Do that a few dozen times and you’ve got a few dozen spots depending on sealant to survive 160-degree summer surface temperatures and monsoon downpours. Standing seam skips all of that. The clamps grip the vertical seams, and many are tested and listed to the same UL standard that covers solar mounting and electrical grounding. When we finish a standing seam metal roof installation, I tell homeowners exactly which seam profile they have so their solar installer orders the right clamp the first time. That one five-minute conversation saves a lot of headaches.
Can you put solar on corrugated or exposed-fastener metal?
You can. It just works differently. Exposed-fastener panels, the corrugated or ribbed style you see on a lot of Tucson casitas, workshops, and ranch properties, don’t have tall seams to clamp onto, so installers use brackets that attach at the existing fastener points or bridge the ribs. Metal shingles use their own replacement-style mounts. Those systems are solid when installed correctly, but they do go through the roof, so the sealing has to be done right. Here’s the part I’d want any homeowner to understand: on these roofs, the quality of the roof installation matters even more, because every solar bracket is sitting on a fastener we put there. At Kino, our in-house crews stay on the job from start to finish, so the person who set those fasteners is the same person standing behind them.
Why does roof age matter so much before going solar?
This is the one I wish more people asked before they signed a solar contract. The U.S. Department of Energy’s homeowner’s guide to going solar tells people to look at the age of their roof and how long until it needs replacing. The reason is simple: you can’t replace a roof with panels sitting on it. The array has to come off, get stored, and go back on, and you pay for every minute of that.
Now line that up against the panels themselves. National lab research puts typical panel output loss at about half a percent per year, which means a 20-year-old panel still produces roughly 90 percent of what it did on day one. The industry-standard module warranty runs 25 years. So if you bolt new panels onto a roof with eight or ten good years left, you’re signing up for a removal-and-reinstall bill right in the middle of your system’s best years.
Metal flips that math. A properly installed metal roof can last 40 to 70 years, and the Metal Roofing Alliance makes the point that the roof will comfortably outlast the panels on top of it. That’s the whole case in one sentence: install it once, put solar on it, and never pay to move the array for a roof job.
If you’re not sure how much life your current roof has, we offer free inspections, and I’ll tell you straight whether it’ll outlive a solar system or whether you should replace first.
Should you replace your roof and add solar at the same time?
If your roof is near the end of its life, yes, and the Department of Energy points out that doing both together can often save money. Here’s how we usually sequence it with homeowners who already have a solar company lined up. We install the metal roof first. We coordinate with your solar installer on where conduit and mounting zones will go. Then their crew mounts on a brand-new surface with nothing to work around.
Fall is the best window for this in Tucson. Crews can work full days without the summer heat shutting things down by noon, materials handle better, and you finish before our winter rains come through. If you’ve been putting off a roof replacement since the monsoon, this is the season to stop putting it off.
What changed for solar in 2026?
The big one: the 30 percent federal residential solar tax credit is gone. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, the 2025 federal budget law ended that credit after December 31, 2025. Leased systems and power purchase agreements are handled differently, so if you’re financing solar, ask your installer how that affects you, and run the numbers with a tax professional rather than taking my word for it. I’m a roofer, not your accountant.
What I can tell you from the roofing side is this. Without that 30 percent cushion, every avoidable cost hurts more. Paying to pull and reinstall an array because the roof underneath gave out was always a bad deal. Now it’s a worse one. The roof decision carries more weight than it used to.
Will solar panels damage a metal roof?
Not if the install is done right. Large federal data on tens of thousands of systems puts panel failures at about 5 out of every 10,000 per year, so the panels themselves aren’t usually the problem. The problems I see come from the install: clamps overtightened until they deform a seam, the wrong hardware mixed with a steel roof, or a crew walking in the flat of the panels instead of on the seams and leaving dents. That’s why it pays to have your roofer and your solar installer talking before anyone climbs a ladder.
My professional advice
Can you put solar panels on a metal roof? Yes, and in a place that gets as much sun as Tucson does, it’s one of the smartest combinations in roofing. You get a roof that outlasts the panels, a mounting system that often doesn’t need a single hole, and no surprise bill to move the array down the road. The key is getting the roof right first.
At Kino Roofing, that’s what we do. We’re GAF Master Elite certified, our crews are our own, and we’ll give you an honest read on your roof before you commit to solar. If you’re weighing a metal roof replacement in Tucson with panels in your future, give us a call and let’s take a look together.
— Ivan Infante, Owner, Kino Roofing