I borrowed the following blog from my good friend Deep Patel, owner of gogreensolar.com.  Deep and I have been working on a plan to compare 6 solar panels from different companies.  My job was to design the system and provide the permit documentation.  Heritage Solar, my company, also helped provide 2 of the 6 solar panels.

I enjoyed working with Deep and his friends from gogreensolar and from the East LA learning center to install the solar array in Deep’s backyard.  Deep learned how tough it is to get permits in cities like West Covina that are not friendly to Solar.  I leave you with Deep’s commentary below:

I find it quite ironic that the City of West Covina has the Sun in their city seal because there is one thing I can guarantee you, West Covina does not support solar energy. I learned this the hard way through the miserable process of working with City Hall to obtain a permit to install solar panels in my backyard. I was born and raised in West Covina and had a great experience the 26 years I have lived in this city, although that changed in a heartbeat when I began working with the city on our project, the battle of the solar panel brands.

All I wanted to do was install a few solar panels, using UL listed parts and a very popular pre-engineered ground mount called GroundTrac made by ProSolar that has been permitted all over the US. When I first started the project I thought obtaining the permit would be a breeze since we’ve helped many of our customers secure permits for their projects. Plus, I had Dennis Epp of Heritage Solar wet stamp the plan set.

Dennis is a well respected electrical engineer, C-10 contractor, and NABCEP Certified Solar Installer and his company is a top solar contractor in Southern California. Going into the project I figured the City of West Covina would be appreciative of a homegrown citizen putting together such an important project that would help solar energy move forward, but boy I was wrong.

I was confident our plan set was in good order before submitting it, because I googled “West Covina photovoltaic permit” and found a document on westcovina.org titled, Basic Information Required for Photovoltaic Plan Check Submittal.

I submitted the three copies of the plan set on December 8th and was instantly approved by the planning department. When I got the Plans to Building and Engineering, that’s where things started to get rocky.

They wanted a fee to “check my plan” and if I wanted an expedited check I would have to pay an even higher fee. I paid $166.50 for the “expedited plan check” which guaranteed me a response on my project within 7 working days, in our case that would be December 21st, since the city does not work on Friday. On the 6th the working day, I stopped in unexpectedly to check on the status of my project and they told me the plan checker had not even looked at our plans yet, at that point I could smell the trouble ahead of me.

One of the plan sets we submitted went to the West Covina Fire Department. They called me on December 15th and told me they approved the plans, although I would have to pay them $200 to receive it and submit it back to Building & Engineering.

On December 22nd at 9:46a, the 8th working day, a day late I get a call from Building & Engineering department informing me to come pickup my plans. When I received the plans I noticed the plan checker had made over 30 correction requests, now if they were reasonable requests I would have not been so aggravated, but in our case the majority of the requests he made were already in the plan set!

Also the plan checkers requests were made in sloppy handwriting, which made it even more time consuming to decipher the silly requests. At that point, putting the facts together, I realized that the plan checker had rushed through our plans because he procrastinated till the 7th working day to check our plans, how frustrating! Contacting the plan checker or meeting with him face to face was nearly impossible since he was always “in the field” or not working and he never replied to any of my emails. He did call me once to discuss the validity of his requests and the conversation was very defensive versus collaborating with me to get our plans approved.

To make a long story short, after going back and forth with the Building and Engineering for 6 working days, they issued me the permit on December 30th and charged me another $457 for obtaining the Building and Electrical permit. The entire process took a strenuous 12 working days. We’re not launching a rocket to the moon! I’m just trying to install a few solar panels, this project should have taken no more than a couple hours to approve and should have been done over the counter with minimal fees!

To go solar City of West Covina charged me:

“Expedited” Plan Check Fee – $166.50
Fire Department Fee – $200.00
Acquiring the Permit – $457.90
—————————————
Total $824.50

Shame on you City of West Covina for putting me through 12 days of non-sense and extorting $824.50 from me for doing the RIGHT thing. Encouraging the adoption of solar power is critical to lift our economy out of the recession because our industry creates green jobs and wouldn’t you agree that energy is a huge problem for the entire world?

Solar Power is such an important element to both social and economic progress and through this project I’ve realized that the primary road blocks lies within our own communities. It was extremely annoying to see other people acquire permits to install gas water heaters or even upgrade their electric service to pull more AMPS with ease, especially when those activities are much more dangerous than installing solar panels. Unfortunately, what that means is the process will be much easier if you want to increase your energy consumption, but if you want to be producer and contribute to the grid, then you’ll have to pay a lot and jump through hoops.

What’s next? We’ll after the city comes to inspect all the digging we have done, then we can proceed to build out the solar array. I have a meeting with Congresswomen Dr. Judy Chu, to share my horror story of going solar in the 32nd congressional district and on January 19th, I will be speaking at the West Covina City Council meeting to inform them they’re in clear violation of California Civil Code 714, also known as the California Solar Rights Act of 1978, a little known law that is lightly enforced but prevents any city within California to make the process of going solar unreasonably difficult or expensive.

I hope by sharing this experience I can make the process of going solar easier for the next person. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world” and I intend to do that by enforcing the California Solar Rights Act of 1978 on any city that is making the process of going solar unreasonable for anyone.

Battle of the Solar Panel Brands

Have you ever hear of Battle of the Bands? It’s contest in which many bands, usually rock bands but often from a range of different styles, compete for the title of “best band”. The winner is determined by judges, the response of the audience, or a combination. The winning band usually receives a prize in addition to bragging rights.

These days there many solar panels flooding the marketplace that it’s becoming more difficult for consumers to make informed decisions, most customers just can’t tell the difference. Why not take different brands of solar panels and make them compete head to head in my backyard? So I called up my friend Dennis Epp, President & CEO of Heritage Solar, a leading solar contractor in Southern California and teamed up to bring to you The Battle of the Solar Panel Brands.

Even though solar panels look very similar to each other, not all are created equal. Each make/model of solar panels have their unique characteristics which allow them to produce more or less power in different environments. By adding Enphase Micro Inverters to each solar panel and connecting the system to the internet, we will be able to share live production data with you through our website 365 days a year.

But before we can get to the competition we have to build the stage. I got a big backyard with limited shading, therefore we have plently room to install a ProSolar GroundTrac mounting structure to secure the solar panels in a 30 degree pitch facing true south (192 degrees in our case)

We’ll be installing the following six solar panels to kick off the competition off:

#1 – Sanyo HIP-215NKHA5
#2 – REC REC215AE-US
#3 – Sharp ND-U230C1
#4 – Canadian Solar CS6P-230
#5 – SolarWorld SW 230
#6 – Solon P220/6+/01 230Wp

Our goal is to get the solar array up and running before January 1st, so we may begin collecting solar panel production data from the first day of the new year. We’re still waiting for the City of West Covina to approve our permit to build GoGreenSolar Labs and hopefully the weather will cooperate with us the rest of this month so we can finish this project as soon as possible. Stay tuned!

Wednesday, December 09, 2009 | Filed Under battle of the solar brands, gogreensolar labs |

Recently, I heard that the City of Placentia had decided to reduce their solar permit fees.  The last time we ran a permit through them it was over $1400 and the city Engineer…if you can call him that…required stamped structural engineering for solar installations on a simple roof.  Placentia made my top 10 list of worst cities to work in.  Recently, the citizens of Placentia revolted and they reduced their permit fees.  See City Counsel info.

I don’t know if they reduced their obstacles to solar installation in the building department but they certainly reduced their permit fees.

Recently, I have been working with my friend, Deep Patel, to install solar in his backyard in West Covina to evaluate 6 solar panels from different suppliers. We ran into similar problems with the City of West Covina as we did in Placentia and Newport Beach.  West Covina charged excessive fees and generated excessive obstacles to issuing a permit which clearly violated the California Solar Rights Act.

Once again, I would like to quote from the California Government Code Section 65850.5.

“The implementation of consistent statewide standards to achieve the timely and cost effective installation of solar energy systems is not a municipal affair, as that term is used in Section 5 of Article XI of the California Constitution, but is instead a matter of statewide concern. It is the intent of the Legislature that local agencies not adopt ordinances that create unreasonable barriers to the installation of solar energy systems, including, but not limited to, design review for aesthetic purposes, and not unreasonably restrict the ability of homeowners and agricultural and business concerns to install solar energy systems. It is the policy of the state to promote and encourage the use of solar energy systems and to limit obstacles to their use. It is the intent of the Legislature that local agencies comply not only with the language of this section, but also the legislative intent to encourage the installation of solar energy systems by removing obstacles to, and minimizing costs of, permitting for such systems.”
[California Government Code Section 65850.5 (emphasis added).]

The legislature passed this bill, going all the way back to 1978, and yet it appears that the Newport Beach Building department and the West Covina building department are using every angle at their disposal to obstruct the permitting of solar and take away your solar rights.

I can’t believe that these cities ignore a 32 year old law.

I believe that some of the city planners and city inspectors will become famous in ongoing blogs.  I also believe that the City of West Covina will probably be sued for so substantially violating California law.  I’m looking forward to seeing this and to writing about it.

I first attempted to submit a solar permit for my Brother’s house in Newport Beach on October 8th but was told that my submission was being rejected.  I wrote about this on my blog Going Solar in Newport Beach.

A few days later, I wrote about this process on my blog Going Solar in Newport Beach –Day 3.  This post illustrated the difficulty finding an Engineer that would work in Newport Beach.

I finally found an Engineer that was willing to work in Newport Beach.  He charged me $1750 for the stamped Engineering and the drawings.  With this in hand, I submitted a complete set of drawings including Engineering drawings from Prosolar who would be providing the racking.  My second submission  was rejected by the the Building department Architect because we did not include lateral loads on the drawings.  I called my Engineer and he talked to the architect.  The Architect, apparently although reluctantly, agreed to allow us submit our drawings for the first time due to the fact that we were removing tile from the roof and replacing it with solar panels with no net additional weight.

Newport Beach finally allowed the plans to be submitted on November 25th, 2009.  The plans were again rejected in late December with a list of corrections and I picked these up today, January 6th, 2009.

Apparently, we had not shown the composition roof in sufficient detail nor was the flashing shown in sufficient detail.  The Architect also wants wet stamped and signed Engineering from Prosolar, the racking manufacturer.  This will probably cost an additional $300.

He also wants my Engineer to complete lateral loads on the home, even though the weight of the solar panels will not exceed the roofing materials that we are removing.

At this point, we have spent $1750 for Engineering, over $200 for copies on 18″ x 24″ format, at least $1000 of internal Engineering time, $696 for a Newport Beach Business License and for Permit Submission.  The cost to date is a whopping $3646 and we still don’t have a permit in sight.

I suspect that the Prosolar Engineering will cost at least $300 and when we get the permit approved, the city will charge us for a permit issuance fee based on valuation.  My guess is that the total cost to attempt to get a permit in Newport Beach will be close to $5000.

Once again, I would like to quote the California Government Code Section 65850.5.

“The implementation of consistent statewide standards to achieve the timely and cost effective installation of solar energy systems is not a municipal affair, as that term is used in Section 5 of Article XI of the California Constitution, but is instead a matter of statewide concern. It is the intent of the Legislature that local agencies not adopt ordinances that create unreasonable barriers to the installation of solar energy systems, including, but not limited to, design review for aesthetic purposes, and not unreasonably restrict the ability of homeowners and agricultural and business concerns to install solar energy systems. It is the policy of the state to promote and encourage the use of solar energy systems and to limit obstacles to their use. It is the intent of the Legislature that local agencies comply not only with the language of this section, but also the legislative intent to encourage the installation of solar energy systems by removing obstacles to, and minimizing costs of, permitting for such systems.”
[California Government Code Section 65850.5 (emphasis added).]

It would be hard to believe that a total cost of $5000 and 3 months worth of effort cannot be considered creating unreasonable barriers to the installation of solar.

Someone should be fired for this.

We get calls on a daily basis from Solar Marketing Companies that want to sell us leads.  There are three major types of these companies.

Lead Generators

These companies (the lead generators)  post a website on the internet, claim that they will provide the customer with 3 vetted contractors and then ask the customer to fill in their form.  The vetting process they go through typically consists of a phone call to the Solar Company (me) and then a quick check on the Better Business Bureau website to see if we have any major complaints.  As we have a clean record, we are now a vetted solar company.  The next part of the process is to aggregate leads off of their website and sell them to us.  The typical price is $75 per lead.  The lead generator sells these to 3 companies so they are actually getting paid $225 every time someone fills out their form.  People who fill out the form generally consist of people who haven’t done a lot of research and are just starting to look into solar.  Some lead generators actually call the customer on the phone and ask them if they know how much solar costs and asks if they are really interested in solar.  These leads cost around $125 each with no guarantees of a sale.  By selling these leads to 3 solar companies, the lead generator gets $375.  That’s an extra $125 for making a phone call.

You would think that this sounds like a really good business to get into but there are so many lead generators that we (contractors) look at them as leeches on the industry and we avoid working with them.  The lead generators don’t do a lot of harm but they do increase overall marketing costs and eventually, costs to the end customer.

The second type of lead seller is the Multilevel Marketing email opt in.

MLM Email Opt In

I have been approached a number of times by companies that have opt in email lists.  I haven’t done a lot of research on this but I believe that you give up your email address for a shot at the profits down the road.  We have avoided email marketing campaigns and look at these MLM ideas with some skepticism.

The last and probably the most insidious is the Community Organizer.

The Community Organizer

We have been approached by one of the more well known community organizers for solar in San Diego and Southern California.  They are based in San Francisco and have run campaigns throughout the United States.  In order to be one of their approved Vendors, we were asked to respond to an Request For Proposal (RFP) which included Company Background, Product information, Installation practices, Sales Process, Monitoring, Financing and Pricing.

I started filling out the RFP as this sounded like a reasonably good deal.  Then, I started asking questions:

Q.  So, your company is going to go and run a marketing campaign and aggregate leads.  Does your salesman  go to the customers house or does mine in order to sell the job and get a contract?

A.  Your salesman would go to the customers house and sell the job.

Q.  If we do sell the job, how much do we pay you for the lead?

A.  $1750

Note:  We thought this was pretty expensive and anyone who became approved by the community organizer would have to cut corners somewhere.

Q.  What criteria do you use to select the supplier?

A.  We look at all the criteria but price is very important.

Q.  What if we want to sell higher priced solar panels and higher priced racking?

A.  You will probably lose and we will pick a lower priced supplier.

Note:  At this point, I thought that to compete for this “RFP” with the community organizer, I would have to sell the cheapest solar panels, inverters and electrical equipment and would have to use the cheapest and most inexperienced crews.

We decided, as a company, that we would not lower our standards or respond to their RFP.  In the meantime, we have had the chance to analyze their program and we don’t think it is a very good deal for the end customers.

Here’s why

Here’s what they claim on their website for a 5kW system.

Market Rate             $32,000  This would be $6.4 per STC watt.
Group Discount        -$6050  This would be a discount of $1.21 per watt (nets out to $5.19…not $5.29)
State Rebate              -$4647
Tax Credit                  -$6546

Net Cost                  $15,276

This appears to look pretty good.  Let’s look at the numbers.  What does the $32,000 system price consist of.  Looking at data for installations, the higher price includes a lot of variables:

The prices for panels range from the worst panels to the best panels up to $1.35 per STC watt.  Wow, that’s bigger than the community organizers “Group Discount” of $1.21 per watt as stated above.

Also, the costs for installation on concrete roofs, gravel roofs, or ground mounts are significantly higher.  How does the community organizer account for this comparing the “market price” of an average system to their $5.29 per watt base price?  Well, they have a list of approved adders.  If you start adding in these adders, their base price rapidly goes up and your “Group Discount” evaporates.  Here are some of the adders:

Trenching $16/foot
Interior Conduit Run $10/foot plus materials
Line Tap    $275 per instance
Foam or Gravel Roof $1000
Subpanel $300
Reduce Main Breaker $275
Electrical Service Upgrade $1000-$5000
Clay roof preparation $4/square foot
Ground Mount $85 per panel
Upgraded Solar panels   …beware of this adder as you will get taken to the cleaners

Conclusion

It appears that in their advertising, the community organizer is quoting an average system which consists of houses with clay roofs, houses with gravel roofs, houses that need electrical upgrades, and houses that require ground mounts.  If you add in the higher priced panels, you probably get a market rate of around $32,000.

So where does the Group Discount come from when the community organizer is charging $1750 per sale?

1.  Cheapest modules available
2.  Cheapest inverters available
3.  Most inexperienced crews available
4.  Cheapest materials available

We looked at the overall pricing and Heritage Solar can beat the community organizer’s price on a daily basis if we were to lower our standards and sell the lowest cost modules available.  We have chosen to avoid these modules, however, and go with vetted companies.  Companies like Sanyo, Solon and Sharp have a much better reputation, much better performance specifications and much better power output.

If you do decide to buy from a community organizer, watch out for a bait and switch.  They will try to sell you more expensive modules and will charge you extra for adders.  Our evaluation shows that some of their adders are premium priced.

I’ve often wondered how much solar power would be required to run an electric car.  Not just any car, but how about a Tesla.  To find out, I went to the Tesla Motors website and looked up the performance specifications.

Tesla states that the car will go 244 miles on a charge and a full charge is 70 Amps at 240 volts in 3 hours.

I think the math would work like this.

70A x 240V x 3 hours = 50,400 Watt-hours or 50.4kWhs.

Does that make sense.  At the top tier electric rate  in San Diego of $.34/kWh, it would mean that you could fill up your Tesla for $.34 x 50.4kWhs = $17.14

Not bad.  Now what if you did this with solar.

Let’s make a few assumptions here.  First, 1 solar panel will produce about 1 kWh per day.  For a full fill up to go  244 miles, you would need a full charge and about 50 solar panels.  Most people don’t drive 244 miles per day, however.  So, how many solar panels would you need to go 1 mile?

Here’s the math:

If 50 solar panels = 244 miles then 244/50 = 4.88 miles per panel.

If the average person drives 12000 miles per year or 32.87 miles per day, then the average person would need:

32.87 / 4.88 = 6.7 solar panels to drive 33 miles per day

So, 7 solar panels will power your new Tesla up to 33 miles per day and you won’t ever have to pay for gas again.  Of course with solar, you would need fewer panels in the Summer and more panels in the Winter.

I would  expect solar companies to start offering the Tesla upgrade with Solar panels for about $115,000.  Well, maybe we should wait a little while until a less expensive Tesla becomes available in 2012.

Sometimes my friends laugh at me for riding an Electric assist bike.  I’ve ridden the Registers Annual Bike Ride Across Iowa (RAGBRAI) twice and I’ve ridden the Bike Ride Across Georgia (BRAG)  5 times on a normal bike–I have a nice TREK 5200 hanging in the garage.  On one RAGBRAI, I rode a tandem recumbent and the hills in Iowa were pretty tough on that bike.  I also rode a single recumbent on one BRAG.  When I was younger, we rode a lot of Centurys without longer distance training and could come back in feeling pretty good.  I rode almost every weekend so the long distance rides weren’t too much of a problem.  I can’t go quite as far now and sometimes I’m not motivated to jump on the bike for a short ride.  That’s where the Electric Bike comes in.

No excuses

A while back, I purchased a Specialized Mountain bike.  I added a good seat so I don’t have to wear bike shorts and higher pressure road tires for biking around town.  Then, I added a Bionix rear hub motor and battery.  The last addition was the BOB trailer.

My second car

While a lot of people still ride their bikes for recreation, I have started riding mine for running errands as well.  The Bionx assist is a great addition to a bike that has grown heavy with the addition of the trailer and groceries.  It has four levels of assist.  The first level makes my mountain bike go as fast as a road bike with the same energy output from the rider.  The second level allows the bike to go 18-20 mph into the wind with a full load of groceries.  You still get a good workout but riding into the wind isn’t the drudgery it used to be.   The third level allows you to fly up hills and the 4 level gives an acceleration that has to be tried to be believed.  I usually ride mine on level 2 to conserve the batteries but will kick it up to 3 if there is a steep hill or fierce headwind.

The BOB trailer is great for hauling heavy loads.  It’s low center of gravity makes it easy to pull without tipping over.

Now, about the laughing part.  Many times, friends and neighbors will joke about my electric bike and then jump in their car to go 1 mile to the grocery store.  Ironic.  Many other friends have broken down and taken my electric bike for a ride and they just come back with a great big smile on their face.  I’ve seen this many times.  It doesn’t take very long to charge and if you have a good solar system on your house, the fuel is free.

Of course, you can use a bike to ride to the store and you don’t need electric assist.  However, I have found I am much more likely to ride over for coffee or to the store to pick up dinner with my Bionx assisted bike.  I don’t have to change into riding shorts and riding shoes.  I don’t have to worry about being tired and having enough energy to get home.  I don’t have to worry about headwinds.  I don’t have to worry about that big hill.   I don’t have to lean way over onto my drop down handle bars to cut into the wind.  I don’t actually take terribly good care of this beast of burden.  It’s just there, ready to go, all the time.

I am often skeptical of the actions taken by governments at the various levels.  It is not the intentions of their actions that I question; it is the actual outcomes that I believe are often problematic.  One example of this is the tiered rate structure for electricity and the way that rate increases are imposed.

In the current SDG&E electricity rate structure there are 4 tiers (down from 5 tiers last year).  The tier one limit varies by climate zone. Tier one is charged the lowest cost for the power.   As the utility customer’s energy needs increase above the limit of tier one, the electricity he purchases from the utility company becomes progressively more expensive.

Another restriction on the rate structure is that tier one and two are shielded from rate increases.  This ensures that low income customers and those on fixed incomes are able to afford the basic necessities of modern life.  This also requires that the upper tiers absorb all of the annual rate increases.  Those customers are  usually people who have larger homes, pools and other higher energy needs.  For the purposes of this entry, we’ll call them ‘The Rich’.

The energy rate structure imposes dramatically higher costs on ‘The Rich’.  ‘The Rich’ are usually good at financial analysis and soon determine that continuing to pay inflated prices for electricity makes no sense and decide to install a solar electric system.  Good for them, good for the environment, good for solar installers, good all the way around, Right?

Maybe not.  If the utilities are losing the customers that would otherwise pay the most inflated rates for electricity, how do they maintain their profits?

The faster the utility heaps cost increases on the upper tiers, the faster those customers will install solar (as a solar contractor, I am in the cheering section).  This is the unintended consequence of the rate schedule now in place.  Once enough of the high end users have made the jump to solar, the utilities will have to raise the rates on the lower tiers to make up for the shortfall.

Or, maybe there’s another way.  TOU stands for Time Of Use.  If the utilities can impose mandatory TOU rates, it may be possible for them to recover the lost revenues over the entire rate structure.  ‘The Rich’ will still have the option to go solar.  Those with fewer resources at their disposal will be paying higher electric bills.  You’ll note that we have reached this conclusion without even mentioning cap and trade.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

California just passed a law that will require Public Utilities to pay for excess solar generation.  The bill, AB 920, sponsored by Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), was signed into law by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Currently, if you generate more electricity than you use in a year, the excess simply goes to the Utility for free.  This bill is the equivalent of a feed in tariff.  However, briefly reading through the bill, we didn’t see at what rate the electricity would be reimbursed.  It may end up being a feed in tariff that doesn’t have much value.

Pacific Gas and Electric, (PGE) is claiming that the electricity will be paid for by people who don’t have the resources to purchase solar for themselves.  This is just ridiculous.  If you look at the tiered rate schedule, people with larger homes and pools pay a substantial percentage more for their electricity, and in some cases are being crushed by the size of their electric bills.  For these people, who are already subsidizing the solar rebates, it makes sense to buy solar.  The only reason a person with resources or not would generate more energy than they need would be because the feed in tariff makes good economic sense.

We applaud the Governor for signing this bill.  Now it is up to the rest of the Bureaucrats to implement the bill.  We will see if there is value somewhere therein.

It is a little hard to believe but there are quite a few unlicensed contractors selling, and installing solar in California.  Recently, we were bidding against an unlicensed contractor who advertises that they have a contractors license.  The homeowner was aware of the lack of a license but chose to do business with them even with that knowledge.  This is very risky behavior.  The risks to the customer are great and the risks to the unlicensed contractor are even greater.  Here is an excerpt from the California State License Board website:

I guess this is just another lost cause, Mr. Paine. All you people don’t know about the lost causes. Mr. Paine does. He said once they were the only causes worth fighting for.
Jefferson Smith in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Review of Solar Reservations in Newport Beach California for 2009

I’ve been evaluating the data from the California Solar initiative.  So far this year, Newport Beach California has submitted solar reservations for a whopping 17 solar installations in the entire city.  Out of those 17, the data reveals the following.

Company 1         3 Reservations
Company 2        2 Reservations
Company 3        2 Reservations
Company 4        2 Reservations
Company 5-12 1 Reservation

It appears that one of the early leaders in the quest to install solar in Newport Beach has abandoned the field.  There are a number of companies who have submitted reservations that I have never heard of.  I suspect that they were lured into Newport the first time and will regret they ever set foot in the building department.  This is a sure way to acquire grey hair and lose money.  After my initial experience with the Newport Beach Building department, I wouldn’t be surprised if we never see these companies again.  Newport Beach is one of those few cities that require a host of information including special notes, special signs, special contactors, special conduit, special fire rules and of course, special stamped structural engineering on almost every solar installation.

In order to meet all of these special requirements, I put together a permit package that quoted most of the Newport Beach requirements line item by line item.  I thought surely that I could get this permit approved the first time.  However, one of the Newport Beach building officials “Rejected my Submission”.  They wouldn’t even allow me to submit the permit without the stamped structural engineering calcs and I drove back to the office with my permit submission and all of the Engineering drawings in hand.

Most residential solar installations can be installed in 2 days by an experienced crew.  It looks like it going to take more time,  effort and money to get a permit in this city than it takes to design the system, order the materials and install the system.

The search for a Structural Engineer

As far as I can remember, Newport Beach and Placentia are the only two cities I have encountered that require stamped structural engineering on a residential installation. I’m sure that there are more, but we only see this in the most solar unfriendly cities.  Many realize that you can’t walk on solar panels so that when we install solar panels, we are replacing a live load (walking on the roof) with a dead load (solar panels) of less than 3 pounds per square foot.

My First Structural Engineer

My next step was to call the structural engineering firm I use for commercial jobs and on rare occasions where calcs are required for residential.   I won’t reveal his name but he usually just laughs and thinks it is so funny that a building department requires calcs on a residential roof and that someone is going to pay him for such a ridiculous effort. To my surprise, he said that he didn’t want to work in Newport Beach.  He said that the building department was a pain in the @$$.

My Second Architect/Structural Engineer

We next contacted an Architect/Engineer we had worked with in the past who has worked in Newport Beach.  He noted that Newport Beach probably wouldn’t accept his Engineering stamp if he hadn’t drawn the drawings.  It didn’t sound like he really wanted the job.  He also noted that there are certain engineers who they like and can get things done.

My Third Structural Engineer

My second Engineer gave us a phone number for a third structural engineering firm and we will see how much they charge to do a few calcs for us.  We’ve left a message with them and shall see if they are willing to work in this fair city for a fair price.

It appears that there aren’t too may solar companies willing to work in Newport Beach.  I have connections throughout the industry and I have not yet encountered a solar executive, engineer, designer or installer with any experience that looked forward to working here.

California Government Code–Your Solar Rights

In the meantime, I would like to quote from the California Government Code Section 65850.5.

“The implementation of consistent statewide standards to achieve the timely and cost effective installation of solar energy systems is not a municipal affair, as that term is used in Section 5 of Article XI of the California Constitution, but is instead a matter of statewide concern. It is the intent of the Legislature that local agencies not adopt ordinances that create unreasonable barriers to the installation of solar energy systems, including, but not limited to, design review for aesthetic purposes, and not unreasonably restrict the ability of homeowners and agricultural and business concerns to install solar energy systems. It is the policy of the state to promote and encourage the use of solar energy systems and to limit obstacles to their use. It is the intent of the Legislature that local agencies comply not only with the language of this section, but also the legislative intent to encourage the installation of solar energy systems by removing obstacles to, and minimizing costs of, permitting for such systems.”
[California Government Code Section 65850.5 (emphasis added).]

The legislature passed this bill, going all the way back to 1978, and yet it appears that the Newport Beach Building department is using every angle at their disposal to obstruct the permitting of solar and take away your solar rights.

I’m really rather surprised by this.  The California Solar Initiative incentives and the Federal 30% tax credit are one of the few incentives that can be used by people of any income level.  In fact, the 30% tax credit is unaffected by AMT.  That’s right.  If you are already on AMT, you can still take the 30% tax credit.

In this case, I don’t understand why the residents of Newport Beach allow their building department to throw up obstacles to the implementation of solar when it is such a great investment and the government incentives are available to everyone.

This is mystifying to me.

Newport Beach California Permits October 10th, 2009….Day 3