Installation day came and went...
...and we're still waiting for our energy provider to change out our meter and let us TURN IT ON...
The Solar Install
Installation happened during the 29th and 30th of December, so we were literally installed in 2020. First to happen were all the mounts. Lots of marks on the roof, followed by lots of hammering while the workers tried to find the rafters underneath the thick decking. Next came lots of hole-drilling, and the very generous application of lots of sealant.
I noticed a box of the sealant tubes on the roof. No wonder, considering the size of the globs they were putting down. The more the merrier, as they say.
Meanwhile, the inverter installation proceeded on the designated wall. A master disconnect was placed on the meter panel wall. Lots of "Solar Generation" warning stickers adorn the pipes and boxes.
 |
The first day of work appeared to take about 8-10 hours. The panel install actually happened on the following day, and was done in all of about 4-5 hours.
The Electrical Upgrade
Several days later, our meter panel was changed out. Everyone who looked at our old panel would stare for a while and remark, almost woefully: "that's a new panel." Indeed, it was. When our A/C system had been upgraded, the new system required higher amp service than what was previously feeding the house. That panel was already larger than the original. The solar-ready panel is comparatively HUGE:
You can actually get a sense of the size difference from the image above. The house-original panel is the bare-concrete square behind the upper-left of the solar-ready panel. The white section surrounding that and ending just above the bottom of the new panel was our "new" meter panel from the A/C install. The hole the other electrician had to punch through the wall can be seen half-way obstructed by the solar-ready panel (and yes, ANOTHER hole had to be driven through the wall, some eight inches away from the original).
The meter panel upgrade was somewhat harrowing. Not only were we without power for the duration (which was expected), but some parts mix-ups caused us to need an interim inspection approval (which was NOT expected). The inspector had class later that day and would be unavailable, so luckily the electrician was able to get things sufficiently complete to get our approval and the power turned back on. We were offline for I think about 6-8 hours.
I had been told that most people leave the house and go shopping during this part of the install. My experience has been: never ever leave a contractor to their own devices... Indeed, it was quite good we stayed. Between needing access to the garage, explanations of why things were run the way they were previously (good thing I had been around for that install, as well), answers to various questions, and helping any way I possibly could, we got done with the majority of the work by the end of the day.
The utility mains can be seen coming into the bottom of the meter-base, on the left side of the box. The solar tie-in would happen at the top-right, where two square attachment points can be seen on the very beefy connection bars. In theory, we can turn off power to the house and still accrue credits. I don't see that ever happening, but it's an option.
Our second inspection failed, unfortunately, due to an inappropriately sized ground being run from the solar array to the mains panel. After our installer switched that out, the final inspection passed. Then it was on to the energy provider.
Two Weeks... Two Weeeeeks...
If you have ever seen the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic "Total Recall" (which also wasn't a bad book, as long as you're not looking for anything over-the-top), then you'll blissfully recall (no pun intended) the scene where he's trying to infiltrate Mars, and his special disguise malfunctions while answering questions. And the only thing he/it can say is: "Two weeks."
We received the interconnection agreement from our provider, and VERY PROMPTLY signed everything that needed to be signed. Then came the mandatory (?) 10-day waiting period. I had hoped, rather than believed, that this would be 10 calendar days. The reality was 10 business days, and two calendar weeks later we received a response. Basically, it boils down to the following:
- They have all the paperwork they need from us.
- They have all the county approvals.
- They need to conduct a system impact survey.
- They need to do their own equipment inspection.
The results of the system impact survey will inform them - and us - as to a more precise go-live date. This is because they may have to do infrastructure upgrades (such as swapping out our transformer) to accommodate the generation capabilities of our system. This appears to be mandatory because we are a tier-2 system, capable of generating between 10 and 100 kW of power.
They expect to be done with the system impact survey in... 10 business days, or TWO (calendar) WEEKS.
As much as I would love to think that we'll be able to turn this thing on mid-February, I'm not going to hold my breath. Meanwhile, the panels are just sitting up there, smiling at the sun.
Other (and Cooler) Things
Because my wifi kinda sucks, and because I love to hardwire my equipment, I am in the process of running ethernet out to the inverters. One nice aside is that the inverters can be daisy-chained, so I only need to run one main ethernet wire out to them. Each inverter can be accessed via its web interface, which gives a nice amount of information and configuration options.
These interfaces are not strictly required for monitoring, though. The inverters are configured to upload their data to SMA's web portal, where our daily yields will be aggregated and can be viewed along with any history. SMA will also do proactive diagnostic monitoring, and should initiate an RMA and service notification automatically if any faults are detected.
I also came across a Python library that someone wrote to query SMA inverters for their current stats. I might toy around with that sometime, as part of my whole-house energy monitoring plans.
In Conclusion
We wait. We've been waiting. And it seems we'll be waiting some more now. Sigh...
