Short answer: If your roof needs replacing and you already have solar panels on it, the array has to come off and go back on. That job is called a detach and reset. Solar Pro does both halves in house — the electrical disconnection and reinstallation, and the roofing underneath — across NYC, Long Island and Westchester, so there is one contractor and one warranty rather than two pointing at each other.

Why this job goes wrong so often

A detach and reset needs two trades. Removing and reinstalling a solar array is electrical work. Replacing the roof beneath it is roofing work. Most homeowners end up hiring two companies, and the seam between them is where the problems live:

The roofer will not touch the panels, so scheduling has to interlock precisely — and when it slips, your roof sits open or your panels sit in a driveway for weeks.
Neither company will warranty the other’s interface. If water later comes in near a solar mount, you are the one standing between them.
Roofers who do remove panels themselves are doing unlicensed electrical work, and they are the reason a meaningful share of the repair calls we get exist at all.

Holding electrical, General Contractor and Home Improvement Contractor licenses in house is what removes that seam. It is the single most practical reason to use one contractor for this job.

What the job involves

Survey and documentation. Panel count, module and inverter models, racking type, wire routing, and photographs of the existing layout so the array goes back the way it came off — including its production baseline, so we can prove afterwards that it performs as it did before.
Electrical shutdown. The system is properly de-energised at AC and DC, and rapid shutdown devices are confirmed off. This is not a matter of flipping one switch.
Removal. Modules come off and are racked and stored — on site if there is safe space, otherwise off site. Racking and flashing are removed from the deck.
Roof work. Tear-off and replacement, with the new membrane or shingle detailed properly around where the mounts will return.
Reinstallation. New flashing and mounts integrated into the new roof, racking reset, modules remounted, wiring reconnected and torqued to spec.
Commissioning and verification. System energised, every panel confirmed reporting in the monitoring portal, and output checked against the pre-removal baseline. A single panel that silently fails to reconnect is the most common defect in this work, and the only way to catch it is to check.

What drives the cost

We are not going to publish a per-panel figure, because the honest range is wide enough that a single number would mislead you. What determines your price:

Panel count. The main driver — this is largely labour.
Racking type. A ballasted flat-roof system comes apart differently from a penetrating pitched-roof mount, and ballast blocks have to be moved by hand.
Roof access. A Brooklyn brownstone with hatch-only access is a materially bigger job than a Bay Ridge semi-detached with a side yard to stage from. Access is often the difference between two quotes on the same panel count.
Storage. On-site storage is cheaper than transporting modules off site and back.
Age of the equipment. Older modules and racking are more fragile, and discontinued components sometimes cannot be sourced if something breaks during removal. This is worth discussing before the job, not during it.
Whether anything needs replacing anyway. If the inverter is at the end of its warranty life, doing it while the array is already down costs far less than doing it separately later.

That last point is the one worth acting on. A detach and reset is the cheapest moment in the entire life of your system to replace an ageing inverter, upgrade racking, or add capacity — because the labour is already being paid for.

Do the panels come back the same?

They should, and this is worth being direct about, because it is the question everyone actually wants answered.

Modules are durable and generally survive removal and reinstallation without measurable loss. The risks are mechanical and human, not electrical: a cracked module from mishandling, a connector not fully seated, a panel left out of the monitoring, a torque spec ignored. Every one of those is a workmanship issue, which is why the pre-removal production baseline matters. If your array made a given output before, it should make the same output after, and you should be shown that it does.

Ask any contractor quoting this work two questions: do you record a production baseline before removal, and do you confirm every panel is reporting afterwards. The answers tell you what you need to know.

Permits and the utility

A like-for-like detach and reset does not change your system’s rated output, so in most cases your interconnection agreement with Con Edison or PSEG Long Island stands and net metering continues unaffected. Roof replacement itself is permitted work, and in New York City that means a Department of Buildings filing for the roofing scope.

Where it does get more involved is when the reset is not like-for-like — a different inverter with a different AC rating, added panels, or added storage. That is a change to the system as interconnected, and the utility record needs updating. It is entirely manageable when planned in sequence and genuinely annoying when discovered afterwards.

If your property is in a historic district, note that a reset which changes the array’s layout or visibility can bring Landmarks back into scope, even though the original installation was already approved.

Timing, and the mistake to avoid

The expensive mistake is doing these jobs separately: replacing a roof this year, then discovering next year that the array needs work, and paying for a second removal.

Before committing, it is worth establishing how much life your roof actually has left — this walks through how to judge that. If the answer is under about ten years and the array is already up there, doing the roof now while planning the reset properly is almost always cheaper than the alternative.

Licensing

Solar Pro Inc holds New York City Home Improvement Contractor license #2112475-DCA and Department of Buildings General Contractor license #625000, alongside electrical licensing. Both are matters of public record and you are welcome to verify them. All electrical work on your system is carried out by licensed electricians and all roof work by our own contracting crew, which is the reason we can take on service jobs that span both trades.

Get a detach and reset quote

Useful to know up front: how many panels, roughly when the system was installed, whether the roof is flat or pitched, how the roof is accessed, and whether you already have a roofer involved.

Request a detach and reset quote — or call (718) 962-7699. We cover all five boroughs, Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester.