A 2015 goal: Get solar on the roof in the OC!

 Everyone involved with OCR hopes you had a fun end to your 2014 and are now ready to embrace the full potential of the new year.  2015 is likely to be very busy in the world of clean solar energy, with the market for solar generation hardware continuing to grow at ~20% a year and, for us here in Orange County, CA, a return of the DOE Solar Decathlon in October!

The start of the new year is also time to set goals for the upcoming years.  So with that in mind, I've decided to set my main (personal) solar goal for 2015: to design, procure and install my own home solar system and document all the steps, problems, learning and resources needed to do so.  I've searched online for similar step-by-step accounts of this process for a home in Orange County, and I have not found anything that I think does a great job of listing all the needed information, complexities, costs and resources needed to get the job done.  I decided the only way to really learn how to do this is to turn myself into the guinea pig and give it a shot. I will document my progress here on the OCR blog as I move through the steps, and then post a full "How To" document once the project is complete.

With the goal stated, I am happy to report I've already completed a version of "Step #1", which is to understand my usage, size the system and start the conversation with the city.

Step 1 - Understanding the need 

In 2014, a utility rep told me a great tag line, "Reduce before you produce", meaning the best use of money is to reduce your power usage before you take the steps to produce your own power with solar.  Last year I replaced every fixture in my home with LED lighting.  I used Cree (T60 I believe) dimmable sunk fixtures, at a cost of about $24/each.  The color temperature is great at about 2700k, so I recommend anyone to check them out.

After replacing the lighting, my electric bill was coming in at about $30/month ($360/yr).  This is low enough that going solar with a leasing company (like SolarCity) really doesn't make any sense.  But to do the project myself, and with creative sourcing on components, my hope was to reduce my bill to $0/month (with self generating credits) without a huge amount of money up front.  

So here are some draft usage numbers.  I use about 150 kWh / month (1800 kWh/yr), so with my south facing roof I am estimating roughly about 5 hrs / day of rated sunshine.  So, doing some back of the envelope math, 1800 / 365 = 4.93 kWh/ day / 5 hrs sunshine / day = 1,000 W of panel needed.  I know this is very rough, but for now its OK, I just want to understand about the magnitude of power I will need.  

Right now you can buy solar panels for about $1/W direct from vendors such as wholesalesolar.com.  But, I am going to try and source used panels for much less than this to see if I can do the entire project for $1000-$2000, or about $1-$2/W.  This way the payback would be 3 - 6 years, which I feel is a great deal.  

Step 2 - What does your city require

Every city in the OC will be different, but I started this by visiting the building permits office at the Huntington Beach City Hall.  There I got a copy of the step by step instructions for installing solar on a residential structure, and it starts by talking with the city's solar permit inspector.  Huntington Beach has a dedicated solar inspector.  The next step is to talk to the inspector about what is required to get the project approved before I start building.  I have a feeling I will need to know which panels, inverters, racking, ect I will be using before I submit the plans.  

Stay tuned for an update on my 2015 solar power saga as I make progress against this goal!