Tweet
When I build a computer or put a car motor back together, I am never quite sure if everything will work as intended. When it does I often times feel victorious. Such is the same with my solar panel system which was just tied into the grid by my electrician. The next day I booted the system up and low and behold, it works! I did all of the work by myself other than the wiring between the AC disconnect and the main panel. It was a lot of fun. Monday I will call for the final city inspection. I anticipate it to go smoothly and then will submit for PTO from SCE.
My total cost for the materials and an electrician to tie in the final items was around $14,500. I sourced materials from Renvu and Alt-e. I live in SoCal and Renvu is in California but their prices were still very competitive. I used Alt-e because they had Hanwha 385w q cells and Renvu would only sell me a container of them. I only needed 24. I went with Renvu as my main supplier because of their website and their permitting package. The website put together a complete materials list for me, which helped me get an idea of all the components needed. Their permitting package also saved me from having to figure out exactly what the city of Long Beach would want and how to best present it.
I pretty much started with this website (SolarPanelTalk) and reading a ton of material. Next was PVWatts calculator and reviewing my electric bill. I have a low pitched (10 degrees) South facing roof but could only get about a 7kw system on this portion of the home (18 panels). I kept on going back and forth with different layouts and sizes of panels to get more power on this one roof portion, but could not get enough power without using two additional East and West facing roof locations. The final design included two rows of 9 panels in portrait orientation on the South roof, 2 panels on the East and 4 panels on the West facing roofs, also mounted in portrait, for a total of 24 panels or 9.24kw. Enough to pretty much handle all of my electrical needs and maybe plus some.
After reading all of the pros and cons of straight inverters vs Enphase vs SolarEdge, I decided to go with SolarEdge. I am using the new HD Wave 10,000 inverter with the p505 optimizers. Renvu sold me the 400-5 optimizers which on face value would appear to be ok as they are supposed to be able to handle up to 400 watts. Only after got my HD Wave in the mail and was able to create an account with SolarEdge and use their web based designer did I have a problem matching the Hanwha panels to the p400-5 optimizers. SolarEdge's website basically was saying that the Hanwha panels would only be compatible with the P505 optimizers. I called SolarEdge's west coast sales rep and he confirmed that if the website designer limits me to that choice, it is for a reason and SolarEdge engineering limited that option. Renvu also confirmed their error and paid for return of the incorrect optimizers and only charged me the difference for the upgraded optimizers. I chose IronRidge racking. Having a metal roof, I had to determine my own attachment method. 5S roof clamps were my solution. These clamps attach to the standing seam which is every 17 inches on my roof, using basically a set screw, so there is no roof penetration.
For the Renvu permitting package I debated just getting the line item electrical work for $200, or the complete package for $500. Just the basic electrical package would have been fine as I had done all of the physical layouts myself. But I choose to go with the complete package as I wasn't sure what the city building department would want in a set of plans and /or how to present the information. I didn't want to go back and forth with the city. Having Renvu provide me with a complete set of plans did smooth the process. My plans made it through plan check with essentially no changes. The City of Long Beach provides express permitting for solar systems. If your system qualifies, then all of the plan check can be done right over the counter. My system did not qualify for two reasons. One, my 200amp panel is centerfeed. Don't know why this creates an exception but it did. And I have a metal roof, so attachment methods aren't standard. So I had to pay for plan check and wait 4 weeks. While at the city, they did buy off the physical portion of the plans, so my four week wait would only involve electrical changes if any. So I decided to go ahead and order all of my materials and start with the installation.
By the time I got my permit, 4 weeks later, a good portion of the work was done. The city allows for only one inspection to get a final, but I didn't want to risk the inspector not liking something with the install, so I had the inspector out mid way. With all of the racking in place, the optimizers installed, all of the wiring in place and a paper cut out of the invertor and AC disconnect taped on the wall in the intended location. Mostly it went well. As a side note, I am kind of shocked that inspectors don't really care about anything other than "is the system grounded and will it not kill somebody". If the system does't work, is improperly designed or shoddy in any other manner is of no concern. The system just needs to not kill somebody. The end result of this first inspection was everything was ok other than some grounding on the the emt conduit and labels needed to be plastic placards. So I forged on with mounting the solar panels and the final wiring install.
My guesstimate is my system if professionally installed would run around 30k, so I am saving 15k. People have asked me how much time has it taken. To which I respond that it really isn't profitable as I am very inefficient as this is my first time. My best guess is that for every hour a professional would spend during an installation, I will spend 5 hours. And for every hour of installation time I have probably spent 20 hours of research. But it has been fun, I have learned a lot, and I have the satisfaction of knowing it has been done right!
IMG_0715.jpgIMG_0717.jpgIMG_0723.jpg
My total cost for the materials and an electrician to tie in the final items was around $14,500. I sourced materials from Renvu and Alt-e. I live in SoCal and Renvu is in California but their prices were still very competitive. I used Alt-e because they had Hanwha 385w q cells and Renvu would only sell me a container of them. I only needed 24. I went with Renvu as my main supplier because of their website and their permitting package. The website put together a complete materials list for me, which helped me get an idea of all the components needed. Their permitting package also saved me from having to figure out exactly what the city of Long Beach would want and how to best present it.
I pretty much started with this website (SolarPanelTalk) and reading a ton of material. Next was PVWatts calculator and reviewing my electric bill. I have a low pitched (10 degrees) South facing roof but could only get about a 7kw system on this portion of the home (18 panels). I kept on going back and forth with different layouts and sizes of panels to get more power on this one roof portion, but could not get enough power without using two additional East and West facing roof locations. The final design included two rows of 9 panels in portrait orientation on the South roof, 2 panels on the East and 4 panels on the West facing roofs, also mounted in portrait, for a total of 24 panels or 9.24kw. Enough to pretty much handle all of my electrical needs and maybe plus some.
After reading all of the pros and cons of straight inverters vs Enphase vs SolarEdge, I decided to go with SolarEdge. I am using the new HD Wave 10,000 inverter with the p505 optimizers. Renvu sold me the 400-5 optimizers which on face value would appear to be ok as they are supposed to be able to handle up to 400 watts. Only after got my HD Wave in the mail and was able to create an account with SolarEdge and use their web based designer did I have a problem matching the Hanwha panels to the p400-5 optimizers. SolarEdge's website basically was saying that the Hanwha panels would only be compatible with the P505 optimizers. I called SolarEdge's west coast sales rep and he confirmed that if the website designer limits me to that choice, it is for a reason and SolarEdge engineering limited that option. Renvu also confirmed their error and paid for return of the incorrect optimizers and only charged me the difference for the upgraded optimizers. I chose IronRidge racking. Having a metal roof, I had to determine my own attachment method. 5S roof clamps were my solution. These clamps attach to the standing seam which is every 17 inches on my roof, using basically a set screw, so there is no roof penetration.
For the Renvu permitting package I debated just getting the line item electrical work for $200, or the complete package for $500. Just the basic electrical package would have been fine as I had done all of the physical layouts myself. But I choose to go with the complete package as I wasn't sure what the city building department would want in a set of plans and /or how to present the information. I didn't want to go back and forth with the city. Having Renvu provide me with a complete set of plans did smooth the process. My plans made it through plan check with essentially no changes. The City of Long Beach provides express permitting for solar systems. If your system qualifies, then all of the plan check can be done right over the counter. My system did not qualify for two reasons. One, my 200amp panel is centerfeed. Don't know why this creates an exception but it did. And I have a metal roof, so attachment methods aren't standard. So I had to pay for plan check and wait 4 weeks. While at the city, they did buy off the physical portion of the plans, so my four week wait would only involve electrical changes if any. So I decided to go ahead and order all of my materials and start with the installation.
By the time I got my permit, 4 weeks later, a good portion of the work was done. The city allows for only one inspection to get a final, but I didn't want to risk the inspector not liking something with the install, so I had the inspector out mid way. With all of the racking in place, the optimizers installed, all of the wiring in place and a paper cut out of the invertor and AC disconnect taped on the wall in the intended location. Mostly it went well. As a side note, I am kind of shocked that inspectors don't really care about anything other than "is the system grounded and will it not kill somebody". If the system does't work, is improperly designed or shoddy in any other manner is of no concern. The system just needs to not kill somebody. The end result of this first inspection was everything was ok other than some grounding on the the emt conduit and labels needed to be plastic placards. So I forged on with mounting the solar panels and the final wiring install.
My guesstimate is my system if professionally installed would run around 30k, so I am saving 15k. People have asked me how much time has it taken. To which I respond that it really isn't profitable as I am very inefficient as this is my first time. My best guess is that for every hour a professional would spend during an installation, I will spend 5 hours. And for every hour of installation time I have probably spent 20 hours of research. But it has been fun, I have learned a lot, and I have the satisfaction of knowing it has been done right!
IMG_0715.jpgIMG_0717.jpgIMG_0723.jpg
Comment