It's ALIVE!!!!

Well, I know it's been a long time and coming, but things have been crazy busy for me at the office so I haven't had much free-time to update all of you on my progress.

They turned the system on a little over a week ago, and things are running pretty well so far.  Having a issue with their SolarGuard monitoring system communicating (wirelessly) with the inverter, but the system itself is running great. I suspect it may be due to the excess of electrical and wireless devices I have around the house causing interference.

From last Sunday to this afternoon I've generated just under 100kWh of electricity. Basically durning the day while the sun is shining, my meter is running backwards, what a great thing.  So far, the highest production I've witnessed is around 2600W's, from the system size and the 70% rules from DC to AC I suspect that it could get up to about 2800 but I haven't seen it yet.

Once the SolarGuard is functioning properly I'll try to put some graphs up to show the production levels, so far so good!  I'll update again soon!

Miscommunication Oops!

Well folks, we had a minor setback. Yesterday the SolarCity folks were supposed to meet with the Mission Viejo building inspector to get the final city approval. Apparently the two of them had a miscommunication and the SolarCity guy was early, he labeled the system with all the warning labels, and other required stickers. He hung out for a while, and then said he was going to leave. Of course, ten minutes later, the building inspector showed up. He checked what he could on the ground, but since we don't have a ladder which reaches up to the roof, he had to call it a day.

I'm hoping that SolarCity and the Inspector can get a new time worked out so we can get this system online.

Installation Complete!

SolarCity had a team member out today who wrapped up the final details.  He turned the system on to test it and showed my wife the meter running backwards.  Unfortunately that's all that we could do until the inspection comes through. I uploaded a new video and a picture to the site.

I'll keep you posted on the next few steps!

Video here.

Quick Update

So, they wrapped up putting the panels on the house today.  They said that they were going to send one person out tomorrow to paint the flashing to match the roof and replace a fuse which was bad in the inverter.  If this happens, I'll take pictures tomorrow and update the blog again.

It's been a long process, but I believe that we're getting to the end.  The next fun will come once it goes online and I'll be able to see that first SCE bill.

I've got some panels!

Monday Update:

Well, the SolarCity employees were here again today.  They made some real progress.  I've added pictures and a new movie to my gallery. 

Here's one picture just for good measures. :)

They still have 6 panels to install and haven't run the cables from the roof through the conduit to the inverter, but hopefully they'll wrap up tomorrow, and then the next waiting game starts with the city (to approve the work) then SCE to do the inspection and possibly swap meters.

Let's hurry up and wait!

Wednesday Update

Well, more progress today, the got more of the flashing's up and started to get the rails ready.  They also finished the conduit on the side of the house and ran it up through the eves of the house. It looks really clean.

I've added a new movie of how the roof looks, along with more pictures. 

The gave my wife an update that they were going to need to cut the existing tiles and put slide them into place in front of the existing roof standoffs, and that this would need to push the install completion date out to Monday.  I had thought the original plans took this into account the whole time, I'm a little surprised they hadn't planned on this already, especially since looking at things now you can tell it might be a problem if there was wind and rain.

Now I'm hopeful that they're going to get everything sealed up by Friday since our highly accurate (cough, cough) weather people are predicting rain for Saturday.  I don't need a leaky roof.

Check out the latest pictures and movie here: 

http://paulnp.smugmug.com/Solar/618000

All for now.

Tuesday Update

SolarCity did more work on the roof today, converting those simple bolts into the actual mounting brackets with the flashing to protect the roof.  Check out the gallery for photos and a new video.  I'm having to resort to putting my camera on a monopod, then hanging out a window on the second floor to take pictures, it's not simple, but it's getting some good pictures/videos.

I've also added a picture from the sticker on the back of one of the panels with some details about it.  Enjoy!

Here's to hoping that tomorrow I'll be able to take some more pictures of the panels, but they'll actually be *on* the roof instead of in the backyard.

Monday Update

Well, this process is taking longer than I expected, but I guess that's always the way. A few really nice folks came out Friday and did more conduit installation and wired things into the main breaker panel. They also started to do some work on the roof.

We had a freak lightning storm this morning and had a little rain, I was nervous since the inverter is still open on the bottom, and I didn't know what condition the roof was in, but hopefully it wasn't enough to be overly concerned about.

They came again today for about 4 hours, dropped off the 24 panels (WOW, they're a *lot* bigger than I expected - see new photos).

I managed to get some pictures of the roof and how the installation is going.  Have a new gallery being hosted over at the good folks at SmugMug, check out the photos here:

Paul's Solar Pictures

Hopefully tomorrow I'll have more to update and have some pictures of some panels on the roof! 

Install Started!

Well, we had a pretty productive day here in *hot* Mission Viejo (95 as of 5PM tonight).  SolarCity showed up this morning and started the electrical portion of the job running conduit from the breaker box to where the inverter is going to be located and then mounted the inverter. I've taken pictures of the progress and have them in a PhotoBucket album which I've linked to below.

Hopefully tomorrow we'll get more action and maybe even get some roof stuff going.

Enjoy the pictures here.

BREAKING NEWS: Installation Date!

I had a call from the Solar City folks this afternoon and they scheduled my installation to begin on Thursday, September 25!  I'm excited to get an install date and know that I will soon be generating some of my own power.  Too bad it couldn't have happened prior to July and my $400 electric bill. :)

I'll keep you informed as I hear more.

HOA Approval!

Hi Friends -- It's been a long time since my last update, but as of last Friday, I received approval from my home owners association. I sent that along with the neighbor awareness form off to the City of Mission Viejo for building permit approval. Now it's another waiting game. All for now!

My update..

So, I had a nice call from the SolarCity folks last Thursday, they dropped the permit application off at the city of Mission Viejo. They had a form they needed me to complete (neighbor awareness) and I got that signed along with my association neighbor approval form. Dropped the HOA plans off at the HOA office and now it's more waiting. We'll see how things go.

Huge Solar Plants Planned for California - SLO

The NY Times is reporting that two Solar PV plants are planning for San Luis Obispo. The arrays will cover 12.5 square miles, and could generate up to 800 megawatts of power -- the amount of power produced by a large coal-burning power plant!

Cool new site..

I read about this site on Gizmodo and thought that I would share. The site seems to be getting hammered right now, so be patient.

It's called RoofRay and will do a little estimation to see what type of solution would be possible on your roof.

Pretty neat stuff.

Solar Systems Design Complete!

Last Friday I received a ten page PDF of the detailed design plans which SolarCity put together for me. There was a small change, they no longer have the BP200 watt panels originally quoted, so they switched me to 24 190W BP panels instead. That changed the costs a litle, but nothing too significant, they sent me an ammended lease, and I filled it out and am sending it back.

SolarCity is going to handle the submission to the city to get the building permit, and handle the relationship with Southern California Edison (SCE).

Mike is going to talk with the HOA to see how we can get this approved as quickly as possible.

All for now, I'll keep you posted.

Waiting game..

Like any new purchase, the wait between ordering and receiving the goods no matter how short, seems like forever (thus the reason overnight shipping is so popular). It's been two weeks from the site audit, I'm awaiting word from the good folks at SolarCity -- they warned me about this, but it still is painful to wait. Especially when it's getting hot and our electric bill is getting bigger and bigger. I'll keep everyone updated and post more as soon as I hear something. On another note, I found another guy who is blogging about his solar experience, he calls himself SolarDave and can be found at http://www.solardave.com/.

Site Audit today!

Well, today SolarCity sent out Aaron to do the site audit/inspection.  He arrived a bit early at 8:30am and went to work.

He climbed around on the roof taking pictures and detailed measurements.  Then he checked out the main electrical panel to check to make sure everything would support the PV system. When he was done outside, he came inside and took a look in the attic, again taking measurements and pictures.

When he was done, he put together an overview for me to take a look at.  He let me know that I could install up to 28 panels (2 strings of 11, 1 string of 6) and I could call my sales rep if I wanted to see what that would entail.  He showed me the location of the inverter, along with where the conduit would probably be run. I signed the screen saying he explained everything to me.

Seeing how I could get 6 extra panels, I was curious as to what it would change my lease to. I shot Mike and email to find out.  It's significantly more expensive and while it would be nice to be able to use the additional power, I suspect that if we carefully plan our utilization during the day, we should be ok with the smaller system (which we're getting at a very nice discount).

While Mike and I were talking, I asked if he had the rate information for peak/non-peak for SCE as I wasn't able to find it.  I'm still trying to determine if TOU (time-of-use) metering is the way to go, or if I should stick to the tiered system.

He let me know that the peak/non-peak rates are different based on season (something I didn't know), he also gave me the rates:

SCE

Summer Peak $ 0.36/kWh

Summer Off Peak $ 0.19/kWh

Winter Peak $ 0.21/kWh

Winter Off Peak $ 0.18/kWh

For folks in San Diego, he also provided me with their rates as well:

SDG&E

Summer Peak $ 0.26404/kWh

Summer Semi-Peak $ 0.16788/kWh

Summer Off-Peak $ 0.14927/kWh

Winter Semi-Peak $ 0.16115/kWh

Winter Off-Peak $ 0.15126/kWh

Now the benefit of having the solar system is that during those peak times of summer days (when my panels will be generating the most electricity) SCE will pay me the full retail rate of $ .36/kWh when I sell them back power.  Then, in the evenings and nights when power is less expensive (and my panels aren't generating any power) I can buy that back from them at the $.19/kWh rate.

Good stuff.  More later.

New news...

It's been a while since I was able to last post.  I signed the documents and shortly thereafter received a welcome email explaining the next few things that are going to happen.  First on the list was a site inspection.  

A couple days later I had a call from someone in the customer service group at SolarCity.  They wanted to schedule a time which they could come out to do the inspection.   They're going to be here on Wednesday at 9am.  They said that it should take around 3 hours. They're going to climb up on the roof and take detailed measurements, inspect the attic, and more.  I can't wait to see what's going to happen.

The nice folks in customer service said that once that was completed, that detailed information is sent to the engineering group who put together the engineering diagrams.  They said that it can take up to 3 weeks for that to happen.

I'll update you more once the site inspection is done.  Until then, take care.

-paul

Some quick updates..

So, it's been a few days to post, but a lot has happened. My brother-in-law had a quote last Thursday, amazingly they quoted him the same sized system (22 Panel 4.4kw). The issue was it his quote was more than $30/month less than mine. I immediately emailed my sales person to see what could be done.

Needless to say, SolarCity came through and matched the system prices since the system sizes were exactly the same, and the homes are very similar (concrete tile roofs, 2 story, etc).

I'm pleased as punch that they were able to do this, I'm supposed to meet with Mike today to sign the lease.

More updates later.

More food for thought..

I'm working on a couple of other posts, but figured that this was pretty timely information. Interesting read:

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ratehike2-2008jul02,0,801347.story

Perfect!

Ok, Mike came through and got me the right numbers, lease of $115/month, SCE bill should be around $35/month with similar utilization to last year.  This is what I was looking for.  Going to put some graphs together to share.

SolarCity continued...

So a few days went by and I didn't hear back from Mike, I shot him a mail and he told me that he's been real busy and that he was going to work the numbers and get back to me. I had a voicemail from him a little while later letting me know that he improved things a bit and that he wanted to talk a little so he could let me know the details.

I couldn't chat right then, so I shot him an email asking a few questions, he got back to me with a proposal which was similar to what I already had, but it was using my 2006 utilization (as I had requested 11k KWh), it was going to work out to be around $100/month for the lease, and $75/month for SCE. I asked him what it would end up being if he put in my 2007 utilization (8900 KWh). I didn't hear anyting back from him for a day. The next day (yesterday) I had a call from him asking what I thought of the proposal and having him remind me that the promotional period will be ending soon (this is the first time he seemed a little salesmanie), I said I'm open to it, but that I wanted to see what my exposure would be with the newer utilization with the lower usage (as I mentioned in my email). I said I had replied to his email, but he hadn't seen it.

He said he would take a look at it and give me a call back. I told him that I would be happy to resend anything if necessary and to just let me know.

I just had a call back a few minutes ago where he asked me about when I sent him the message with my utilization numbers. I gave him the date and time and he found it. He's going to work the numbers and get back to me.

For some reason, he sized down the number of panels in my system from 22 to 16 and basically kept my utilization at the lower point. I explained to him that I'm looking for the SCE bill with a 22 panel system running at ~9000KWh. I think he finally got it.

I know the lease should be $109/month for that system, I figure that the lease is based on the size of the system, not my utilization. He's trying to figure this whole thing out now. More details later.

Next Steps with SolarCity

So, a few days went by since I attended their seminar, I was a bit surprised that no one had contacted me, I was definitely interested in their free home evaluation.

I went to the website and filled out their contact-me webform, it was a Saturday morning, a couple hours went by, and I didn't hear anything back, so I gave their 800 number a call. Spoke to a nice guy named Martin who asked some questions and looked up my house in Google Earth (or maps, or something) and took a look at my exposure and roof, and said that he would set me up with a salesman named Mike. We setup an appointment for Mike to come out and go over a home survey.

Mike called the day before the appointment to ask a few questions, and confirm my address and where I was located. We chatted for quite a while about what I was looking for and what they offered. I told him I'd see him the next day.

Mike arrived ontime the next day and set about doing a visual inspection of my house. He said that they don't like to have the folks go up on second story roofs to inspect, but luckily the neighbor behind me has the same model house so I let him peek out our windows to get an idea of what our roof looks like. He took a few digital pictures, and took some measurements.

We then plugged the data from SCE into the SolarCity application that was on his laptop, I asked him if we could put in the power we consumed in 2006 rather than 2007 since I figured we'd use a little more if we could get it cheaper. He figured by the measurements and what's on my roof he'd be able to have 2 strings of 11 panels installed (22 total). He plugged everything in and based on my utilization the tool said I would save $7 the first year.

At this point I was a little disappointed that there wouldn't be a bigger savings, but I understand if nothing else, I'd be doing my part to cut down on things for no real cost. Mike said he would play with the numbers by changing things around a bit (less panels, different panels, etc) and let me know he would get back to me.

All in all, Mike was at my house for about 2 hours. He never pressured me into something, and was knowlegable about the product and the technology. I anxiously awaited more information.

The SolarCity Investigation

Ok, I admit it, I'm a bit of a freak, I already let you folks know that I'm a geek, but when something catches my interest, I always belive it's best if I can learn everything I can about it, so I can speak with some authority and understand the process completely. I had to know more about SolarCity and their approach to selling/servicing their product.

I did a lot of research on their website, read all that I could, looked up the stuff which wasn't well defined on their site in other places (thank God for Wikipedia and Google). I figured I was pretty well versed by the time I was done with my research. I saw that they were going to have a community event at the local senior center in about a week, so I registered and anxiously awaited the event.

Some background information on SolarCity:

• Company was originally two local solar installers working out of the Bay Area. The founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors (Elon Musk) bought those and consolidated them into the new company SolarCity
• They have an agreement with Morgan Stanley to purchase and install these solar panels and utilze the corporate rebates to make things more affordable to the average user. This allows them to offer a current promotion of a zero down 15 year lease.
• They have an online portal where you can view solar power as it's generated, and view historical generation.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I got a nice view of their little green Toyota Prius, with the SolarCity logo emblazened on the hood. The people from SolarCity were friendly and the presentation was informative (even had some new information which I didn't see on their website). The question and answer session was lively and lots of folks had questions and comments.

I filled out the slip to have someone contact me, and went on my way.

A little background..

First of all, I have to give it to SCE, they've got a great feature of their website where you can register, log-in, and get your last 5 years of historical data, month by month.

I did this, and found that over the past 5 years, I've spent almost $11,000 on electricity for my ~2000 square foot home in Mission Viejo. That was quite the shocker. Over the past 5 years, I've managed to do a decent job with conservation, even with an expanding family.

I've gone from a annual high of almost 14,000 KWh in 2003 to 8,900 KWh last year. I did this by a combination of the following things:

• Switching as many lights as possible to CFL (especially the canned lights throughtout the house).
• Turning up the thermostat (80 when we're not home) 75-78 when we're home.
• Getting rid of desktop computers. I was shocked when I used my Kill-A-Watt device to learn that a powerful desktop computer can chew up so much power consistantly. Switching to a couple laptops made a huge difference.
• Installation of a whole house fan. This has been a lifesaver on milder days. In the evenings when the temperature dips down, we can open our windows and turn these fans on to suck-in all the cool moist air. They're less effective in the summer when it stays warmer at night, but we've been able to do a good job of moderating the use of A/C during the cooler nights.

So, even with all this work my electric bill has decreased, but not as much as I would have liked. Also, in the summer, I still get large ($300-$500) electric bills.

I started to do some research into a few different solutions. Since our whole house fans are working so well, I was poking around on their website and found that they offer a 'swamp-cooler' type device, it sounded interesting, so I figured that I would chat with my brother-in-law about it.

He said that while the idea is sound, execution is difficult if there's any humidity in the air, sometimes we don't have much humidity, but often it is a bit humid. A little while later, he sent me a brochure about Solar City and a new program they're offering called Solar Lease.

Welcome and a quick overview...

I'm a Southern California resident who is pondering going the solar route. Since I'm an early adopter and a technology geek at heart, I've done lots of research. In my journey to collect as much information as possible about Solar, I've learned that there are some serious gaps in the information which is easily available. I figured I'd share my experiences with you. Hope you can get some good information from this, and enjoy my ramblings.