Corrections Log

2026-11-13 · Authorship: from an unverifiable name to a verified real maintainer

Stage 1: every page previously carried a named individual byline and a Person schema for an identity and credential set we could not substantiate. Google's people-first documentation, updated 2026-11-11, lists fabricated creator profiles and made-up names as deception, a serious signal on YMYL (household finance) pages. Authorship was therefore changed to an organizational byline, with a public Who / How / Why disclosure covering AI-assisted drafting, human verification and why automation is used.

Stage 2 (same day): the site owner confirmed that the name is real: Jian Yuan (also written Yuan Jian) is the person who maintains this site. Authorship was restored to that real individual. The about page is now a single-person profile marked up with ProfilePage and Person, both name spellings are recorded as alternateName, every page's visible byline links to that profile, and each page's author field points at the same person identifier. The HelioCalc Organization remains the publisher. No credential, license, headshot or biography detail was added without the owner's confirmation. The sameAs links were added later the same day as Stage 3, once the owner supplied real, publicly readable profile URLs. Both stages are logged here rather than silently backdated.

Stage 3 (same day): the owner confirmed that the same byline appears publicly on three other calculator sites he maintains. All three author pages were checked on 2026-11-13 for a live 200 response, a matching canonical URL, a visible Jian Yuan byline and Person structured data. They are now listed as sameAs on the author entity so the identity can be cross-checked. These are first-party pages, so they corroborate consistent use of the name rather than provide independent endorsement; no credential, title or expertise was inferred from them, no reciprocal site-wide links were added, and the identity reference exists only in structured data. Affected pages: all 87 HTML pages (author entity) and this log.

Stage 4 (same day): a public profile on a third-party platform, created and confirmed by the same owner, was added as a fourth sameAs reference. On 2026-11-13 the profile at https://github.com/yuanjian2610-debug was checked against the platform's public API and its publicly readable page: the displayed name is Jian Yuan, the location is Weihai, China, the listed website is this domain, and the short biography names the four calculator sites without claiming any credential. This is the first sameAs reference on a host the owner does not control, but it remains self-authored information: it corroborates consistent public use of the name, not expertise, endorsement or independent verification. No link was added to visible page copy, no reciprocal link was created, and no credential, title, headshot or employment claim was inferred. Affected pages: all 87 HTML pages (author entity only) and this log. Visible bylines, page text and the calculation model are unchanged.

Change: the 51 state pages opened with one of six rotating boilerplate sentences. Each state page now opens with a paragraph derived from that state's own EIA rate, cost basis and resource band, and adds an original comparison of sized array, year-one production and payback against the national model. Shared boilerplate was shortened and linked to the methodology page instead of repeated.

Change: robots.txt no longer disallows /404.html, because blocking that URL would stop Googlebot seeing its noindex directive. The WebSite schema no longer advertises a site-search action this site does not offer. Sitemap lastmod and dateModified now reflect this substantive revision, while datePublished stays at the original date.

Affected pages: all 87 HTML pages (visible byline, footer, authorship markup, editorial standards, about, corrections, llms snapshots), all 51 state pages, sitemap.xml and robots.txt.

2026-11-07 · Initial 2026 build

Correction: the earlier single-page prototype of this site modeled a 30% federal residential clean energy credit and described it as available through 2032. That is incorrect for 2026. IRC section 25D was terminated for expenditures made after December 31, 2025 by Public Law 119-21; IRS FS-2025-05 Q1 and Q7 state the rule and the installation-completion test. All prototype copy, metadata, structured data and formulas carrying the 30% assumption were replaced.

Affected pages: entire site. The federal credit is now a constant $0 for homeowner-owned systems, shown explicitly on every estimate, and the section 48E third-party-ownership distinction is documented in the lease-versus-buy guide and the 2026 credit guide.

2026-11-07 · State electricity rates

Correction: prototype state rates were described as 2024 annual EIA-style averages. They were replaced with EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A August 2026 single-month residential values for all 50 states and DC, reproduced verbatim. Table 5.6.B (year-to-date) is a different series and is not used.

Affected pages: all state pages, the states hub, the data-sources page and the calculator defaults.

How to request a correction

Use the contact page with the page URL, the specific number or statement, and a source we can verify. Substantive corrections are added here with the date, the change and the affected pages. We do not silently edit a material figure.