Solar Panels are finally turned on

We finally got interconnection permission from So Cal Edison so now our meter can run backwards and our panels can actually start to produce the electricity they were intended to and to think it only took over two months. To be fair though I did hear that there was a big boom in solar panel installations around the time we had Phat Energy install our panels. I guess as the rebates start to run out people rush to do things, of course that wasn't our reason for installing panels. For us our electricity usage went up just enough to throw us into the next usage tier when we had our underwater cistern and all of it's pumps installed and then we discovered all the local rebates in addition to the federal rebate cap being removed for solar panels so we decided to go ahead and install our panels now, solar panels are one of the things we planned to do eventually so the timing just seemed right for us.

Day 3 of the solar install

All 18 of our solar panels up on the roof

Our inverter all hooked up and ready to go

"screen shot" from our inverter

"screen shot" from our inverter

"screen shot" from our inverter

"screen shot" from our inverter

Day 2 of the solar install

The braces for the solar panels went up and then half of the solar panels went up.

The inverter went up on the wall this afternoon.

Day 1 of the solar install

The footers went up on the roof of our house this morning in preparation of the panels being installed tomorrow.

At lunch time our POD showed up with all of our solar panels and our inverter.

3.78 kW - measuring day

So today our solar panel sales person came by and took measurements and readings and all that good stuff for our system. I was very happy with the readings on the various sections of the roof on the back of our house. The readings ranged from 97 - 99% meaning that we have at most 3% shade on any of the sections of our roof facing the back yard. This is great news because this allows us extra space to add on to our system later if we decide to. Next steps are bringing them our first payment, we already gave them our deposit, and then they can order our panels and get our CAD drawings ready for where all the panels will go on our roof and start on the paperwork for our rebate from our electric company (So Cal Edison).