The Latest Solar Project Part 1
Oh no! Some roof real estate on the property that doesn’t have solar panels! The view from my rooftop. And yes, my neighbor has solar, it is slowly becoming ever more popular in the neighborhood.
You have plans, and then plans change. You’ve covered everything, then you haven’t. This is a story about how changes occur when you don’t expect them to, and what happens when they do. It is also a reflection on how a bit of apprehension from the new U.S. administration’s potential policy changes is influencing the timeline for this latest project.
The Story
The big changes were as follows. With the advent of stepping up my monitoring of energy use (covered in three blog posts here, here, and here), I could clearly see changes that were occurring. The hybrid heat pump hot water heater had lowered the gas bill quite a bit as it doesn’t use gas at all. This did slightly increase the electrical usage. Overall this was still a lowering in expense, but I did notice it. An old microwave that died was replaced, and the replacement used slightly more power. A new rack mount NAS solution was installed on the network, upping the amount of energy usage. But most significant was EV charging.
Originally my EV charging was covered by the existing solar setup as far as cost goes. However after the birth of a new granddaughter (yay!), my son and daughter-in-law who live on the opposite side of the DFW metroplex from me started staying at home a lot more, and I wanted to see my granddaughter so there was a big increase in driving to go visit. This meant more charging, which is more cost, and was much more evident during the fall as the amount of daily sun was decreasing. The impact meant that sometimes I wasn’t getting a full charge on the house batteries on EV charging days, which meant the plan of using battery power during evening peak electrical usage hours was reduced.
None of this is bad news, in fact when I add up all the numbers (EV vs gas-power car, switching to heat pump hot water, new microwave, NAS upgrade) I’m still spending less money than before. Even the slightly increased EV charging could be temporary in that my granddaughter and her parents may be moving a lot closer to where I live. But my inner tech nerd seemed to take it as a challenge and I made a list of things I wanted to change and upgrade to the solar setup to cover this. Besides, it was a sign in and of itself - I have a large workshop in the backyard, if I started using it more that would be more power. If friends and family relocated to further away it could mean more driving. Most of all, if there was some nerd tech computer thing I simply had to have and it used a decent chunk of power, well, even more reason to upgrade. Nonetheless I figured I had a while before I needed to get it done. Then things changed again.
The Monkey Wrench
I say monkey wrench, or tipping point, or straw that broke the camel’s back - you know what I mean - but the big motivator for the change to the timeline was the 2024 election.
With the advent of a Democratic administration leaving office and being replaced with a Republican administration with far right views on climate change, energy use, and how to handle the economy, I knew this could impact price and availability of solar equipment. Specifically there are concerns that the tax discount for solar installations might go away and that new tariffs could not only impact the economy and the price of electronic imports but lead to tech component scarcity. As I write this, things are indeed happening that could negatively impact my plans if I wait. But at the time in November I decided why not, I had some cash saved up, I could use it for this.
The original plan was this:
Add 5 additional panels on the roof of my outdoor workshop. Newer panels are typically 410 watts as opposed to my existing 300 and 310 watt panels, and this would bring my panel total to slightly over 16kWh.
Replace the plastic base pad under the batteries with something permanent. It will require an experienced electrician with a knowledge of solar setups to do this, and solar installers have that expertise. I do not, otherwise I’d do this myself.
Migrate the 24 panels using the SolarEdge inverter to micro-inverters. During power generation, there is a threshold that has to be reached before the inverter kicks in, and overall that threshold is lower with the micro-inverters than the SolarEdge, giving me slightly more juice earlier and later in the day.
Finding A New Vendor
My reliable and honest solar provider - Kosmos Solar - went out of business just a month or so after updating my micro-inverters for half my panels in August (an upgrade inspired by better monitoring, detailed here). Late October I was left trying to find a new vendor just to take care of the pad under the batteries, and then November and the decision to start on my plan.
Google searches went nowhere. I would contact companies, was usually ghosted or I’d receive outlandish quotes, like “remove old panels, replace with new panels”. Basically if I didn’t fit in their model of “sell a large number of panels with financing” they were simply not interested. I went to EnergySage where I did encounter some of the same outlandish quotes. But one vendor, Sustainable Roofing and Solar, actually quoted what I was asking for, and even followed up with messages that they needed a site visit to shore up the quote. Very refreshing
After the site visit with actual installation techs, a quote was submitted that included all three areas - new panels, new battery pad, and 24 existing panels onto micro-inverters. The quote was for $15,907.00, which was less than I thought it was going to be. So I put some money down, and crossed my fingers I could get on the installation schedule before the new administration started impacting my plans.
From the paperwork being submitted for grid provider approval. String 1 with the green are the new panels, String 2 and 3 are the older panels being moved to micro-inverters.
delays
By the time a plan was in place and a down payment was made, it was already early December, and it seems from my perspective there was nothing but delays. This wasn’t really the case - the holidays were approaching and not only were personnel from Sustainable taking time off for the holidays and whatnot, the various suppliers they deal with were experiencing the same time off thing as well.
I did remain in regular contact with them, so I knew that their master electrician would have to go over their installation plan, modify it as needed, and I was finally submitted a plan for me to approve before it was sent to the regional grid provider ONCOR.
so Far
As it stands right now, I’m waiting for ONCOR approval, and I then I can get on the installation schedule. It will still require approval from the city, but if ONCOR is cool with things, the city of Arlington is much easier to convince.
I’m even going to take advantage of a completely separate thing I’ve been wanting to do - since they are going to have to dig a trench between the shop and the house, I’ve asked them to lay a separate run of pipe I can use for Ethernet from the house to the shop. They don’t even have to run the cable itself, I told them to run some string through it so I could pull cable through later. I’ve been meaning to do this for a while, and the biggest hold-up has been digging the trench myself. But that’s a different project and separate blog post in the future. Last I heard they had everything hardware-wise in stock, so fingers crossed things move through the needed approval process quickly, and I’m on the schedule for the install quickly.
