We finally did it! We have solar feeding energy into our home!

Ben, how’d you do it?

Great question, I did it very much owner builder style. I didn’t do it all myself, but I think of most things like a lego kit, or a jigsaw puzzle

Essentially I have an idea and I reach out to smarter folks than me, then have them draw me up plans and I follow those the best I can.

I want to do this. How did you actually do it

Ohhh you want details. Here’s how it was done:

  • Learned from contractors what they would build for me, using Energy Sage
    • EnergySage was great! It would not sell my phone number out, but get a couple quotes from local contractors. Then if I liked their quote
    • They quoted me around a 5-6 KWh system
  • From them I compared the two popular options with Home Solar Enphase and solaredge
  • I took the idea from Energy Sage, and had PVcomplete draw up some plans that would pass the county’s requirements
    • I could have figured out how to draft it myself. 
    • But I didn’t really want to take the time to learn all the ins/outs of the county’s requirements

With their plans I went to find my own racking for my solar. I went with a ground mount with Unirac. Mainly because you can design your roof, or ground mount using their online tool
https://design.unirac.com/

  • Then I did a bunch of online buying to find everything I wanted. I ended up getting hail damaged panels that were recovered with some epoxy from someone on FB. The 400w panels were a little more than $100 each!

How much was all this?

I drew up a spreadsheet of my total costs. But it was about $15,000 out the door. I thought I’d get it cheaper. But the Government will give me 30% back. Which is about $4,500

What weirdness cropped up?

Several things

  • County Issues #1: Environmental health takes forever to do anything. If you are going to need their approval, make sure you only need their approval once. It took 3 months to stamp my plans, no updates needed, no information given.
  • County issues #2: I originally went with a big plan on solar With a controller and battery. But my friend had to have 5 inspections to pass the county inspector. Depending on who showed up, they had different ideas of “complete”. From that, I realized I didn’t want the county to hassle me about everything. I changed my plans to go with a bare bones install of only solar.
    My friend had a problem with his wires hanging down on his roof.
  • Span issue: Unirac’s tool stopped allowing for longer spans than 10’ between posts so technically I cannot redo my plans. I can see why, it does bow a little in the middle
  • Stickers: One thing the county really cares about is labeling your panel. Ensure to buy proper labels from amazon or some PV place. Then put as many as you can on there.
  • Plan weirdness: My Plans allowed for both a 3” and a 2” pipe installation. Super weird and really confusing because 3” pipe is huge, and more expensive. Luckily the posts I sunk in the ground were to accommodate 2” pipe. 

  • Recommendations?

    Get manual labor help:I am lucky enough to know a great hard worker, who also has been working with electricity for his occupation for a long time. Once I hired him to help me, this project got done in a matter of weeks. Which was way better than me sitting on materials.

    Size up: Alway, always, always install bigger pipe/conduit, or more solar. It’s much easier to not use the excess than to go bigger later.

    Unfortunately I forgot to size up on my conduit. It’s a big trench for a 1” pipe

Get the latest: Some things are worth getting 2nd hand. My solar panels, although damaged, are fairly new. They could be better. But I’m very grateful the inverters and all the other pieces are pretty close to the latest and greatest. I have a lot of runway for tech and other things to improve before I need to make a change.

Totally worth it: There are rumors of PGE going up in price. Costs will go up, and it’s hard to fully understand the savings. But I only recommend doing it now, if you can do it yourself. I don’t know much about having a contractor install and put it on a loan. I took out a small personal loan that will be paid off in a couple months. Mainly to cover the cost before my tax rebate.

For Reference here is PG&Es reading on my meter with solar. First before approval, and then after.

Questions?

If you have any questions I didn’t answer, let me know. Probably anyone reading this has a way to talk to me