If I were looking for a Solar Company and I didn’t have any industry knowledge, I would be hard pressed to cut through all the salesmanship, marketing, hype, industry lack of knowledge, and misrepresentations.  I was once again looking at the statistics in California.  Although I haven’t scrubbed this data, it is rather surprising.

In the past 14 months or so, there are 1113 companies that have sold or installed at least one solar system.  That is really an incredible number.  It appears that only about 200 of those companies have done more than 12 systems which would be about 1 a month.  So, how on earth do you find out whether a solar company has any experience.

Check Out Their Website

A website is a good first indicator.  If all the pictures on their website look like Germany and not California, there is a pretty good chance that they haven’t installed any systems and don’t have pictures of their installations.

Check Out The Better Business Bureau

If they aren’t listed in the BBB, they may not have been around for very long.  There are a number of BBBs and here are two:

LA/Orange County BBB

San Diego BBB

See if they Have a Contractors License

In order to sell Solar in your Home, legally, the company needs a contractors license.  You can check to see if they have a contractors license here:

Check a Contractors License

If they don’t have a license, you should stay away.  Contracting in California is tightly controlled by the Contractors State Licensing Board.  Contractors are required by law to display their contractors license number on all advertisements including business cards.

Ask The Salesman for His/Her SalesPerson Registration

All in home sales persons are required by California Law, specifically, the Contractors State Licensing Board, to be Registered with the CSLB under the umbrella of a contractor.  If someone comes to your home and does not have a registration number printed on their business card and they do not have a registration number, they are committing a misdemeanor.  You can check a Registered Salesperson License Here:

Check a Salesperson license

If they don’t have a salesperson license, you should not continue working with them.

Check Their References

A human resources friend once told me that if an potential employee couldn’t come up with 3 references, we were in trouble.  Everyone has at least 3 friends or family members that will give them a good reference.  Solar companies are no different.  A solar company should be able to give you a long list of references and they should be confident enough of the quality of their work that any one of the references on the list would recommend them.

Conclusion

One of my friends was talking to a city inspector the other day and he said he was seeing a lot of new companies coming into the market.  He said he failed a lot of the new companies and would give them several pages of corrections due to the fact that they really didn’t know what they were doing.

Do your research, check out the companies you call before they come to your house.  After they come to your house, they should be able to show you their contractors license and/or salesperson license.  If they don’t, just throw their proposal in the trash….Next.

I just ran a few statistics for the California Solar Initiative for the past year.  These stats include all of California and the number of systems reserved by month.  The data is unscrubbed but interesting.

Number of Solar Reservations 2009

Jan  569
Feb 682
Mar 734
Apr 1058
May 1440
Jun 1617
Jul 1098
Aug 2357
Sep 1315
Oct 1693
Nov 1444
Dec 1312

Reservations 2010

Jan 1195
Feb 957

While January and February of 2010 are significantly off the high Summer months of 2009, they are still looking better than the first quarter of last year.  Solar is a seasonal business and it always seems to pick up around April 15th.  As would be expected, Solar companies are now starting to think about hiring but I suspect there will be a little bit of a wait and see attitude in the near term.  Customers are still having a hard time getting credit as homes are underwater and in the current lending environment, most banks appear to be requiring an 80% Loan to Value.  There is also a lot of talk about a double dip recession and the near term collapse of the commercial real estate market.

However, I believe that the solar business will come out of the blocks strong this year and we should have a record year as the economy improves.  From a Green jobs perspective, I am seeing a lot of new faces on the block.  We recently bid against 4 companies.

Company 1 had never installed a system in California and was selling without a contractors license. This, of course, is illegal but that’s not stopping a lot of new companies.
Company 2 had installed 3 systems in California and also did not have a contractors license.
Company 3 had installed a total of 3 systems in the past 14 months.  Although they did have a contractors license, they had very little experience in the field.
Company 4 was one of the larger competitors in this space.

I am also seeing a lot of solar training going on.  I recently visited a High School that had started a ground breaking solar training class.  Many local colleges are also pumping out trainees and NABCEP is also promoting an Entry Level Training Certification.  I think that there will be Green Jobs in the Solar Business this year but I am having a hard time believing that there will be enough jobs to absorb all of the new trainees.  I suspect that getting into a solar company will require added experience and education beyond a short solar class.  I also suspect that the Entry Level Training Certificate from NABCEP will carry some weight in the hiring process if two candidates have similar experience and education.

My Grandfather started working in the Coal Mines in Iowa when he was 12 years old, nearly 100 years ago.  The coal miners back then carried a bucket of water with them to drink while working in the mines and at the top of the bucket there was a tray for their dinner.  My Grandfather, Harry Mose McDowell, at 12, was so short that his bucket would drag on the ground.  The only light he had underground was a headlamp called a carbide lamp which generated a very small acetylene torch.   We still have his carbide lamp and my Mom remembers him coming back from the mines smelling like carbide.  The coal camps back then could be rough place to live.  The coal mines were worse.  Each miner was paid by the ton, not by the day.

I still think of coal mining as a dirty, filthy, dangerous job and I have the greatest respect for any man in that line of work.  Coal mining started to increase in Iowa around 1870 and peaked around 1920.  It declined rapidly after that.  As with most underground resources, there is still coal in the ground in Iowa but it is harder and more expensive to mine.

When I lived in Montana, there was a town called Colstrip.  The coal in this area was strip mined leaving a giant gash on the earth.  In the early years, the mine was operated by the railroads but as they converted to diesel electric, the mines were of little use to them.  Eventually the mines were sold to the power companies with the idea that you could generate electricity right at the mouth of the mine and ship electricity across the nation.  Colstrip power plants 1 and 2 became operational during the 1970s and Colstrip power plants 3 and 4 became operational during the mid 1980s when I lived in Montana.  In 2007, one of the Colstrip plants was voted in the top 12 dirtiest plants in the United States.

While I lived in Montana, I remember that these plants were quite a controversy between people who wanted economic development and those who wanted clean air.  The clean air contingent didn’t seem to carry much weight when there are very few people in the area to complain.

As we move forward into this century, I believe it is possible start moving away from fossil fuels.  Slowly but surely, they will get more expensive to mine as the seams run deeper and deeper.  At the same time, we will, more than likely, be able to project what the real cost of what coal mining does to the environment and what coal burning does to the atmosphere.  These costs do add up– Maybe not today in the cost per kilo-Watt-hour, but they will add up in the total cost to future generations.

As these costs become more apparent and are added into the cost of coal fired electricity, the cost of clean energy will become more and more competitive.   Solar Electric generation is only one of the many methods that will be used going forward.  The cost is coming down significantly and the payback period is quickly improving due to lower cost modules and big power cost increases from the Utilities.  With current incentives in California, it is not uncommon to see a real payback period in the 6-7 year range with a system that will continue generating electricity for 30 years or more.

Now that the California Legislature increased the cap on solar from 2.5% of a Utilities total to 5% of a Utilities total generation, we can start concentrating on the next set of issues.  One of the biggest issues facing solar sales and installation today are increasing regulatory requirements from local jurisdictions.

More on that later.

At Heritage Solar, we have been looking for a quality Chinese Solar Panel that we can offer to our customers with confidence.  Until recently, we have not been able to do this.  However, we may have found a company that meets our long term goal of excellent workmanship and quality, strong financials and a strong track record.

One of our distributors  sent a number of teams to China to review solar companies and their products including UL listings, manufacturing facilities, company financials, etc.  Many Chinese manufacturers have been rejected due to poor manufacturing techniques, questionable supply chains, questionable financials and/or lack of a track record.  Recently, however,  they reviewed the manufacturing facilities for a company called Trina and found them to be clean, high tech, and well run.  Trina appears to be  focusing on it’s reputation for quality.

When I started looking into this company, I found a  review from the Motley Fool titled,  “Trina Solar Trumps them All“.

I also looked at the Trina website to understand their core values.  Quality and Integrity are right up at the top and align well with the Heritage Solar core values.

The specifications on the Trina 220-240W TSL-PA05 look pretty good as well.  The TSM-PA05 230 Watt panel has a +-3% power tolerance, Pmax temperature coefficient of -.45%/degree C and a 5 year manufacturing and 25 year power output warranty.

My preliminary review is that this may be a good panel for a roof or ground mount where there is plenty of space and a high efficiency panel is not required.  We may install a Trina panel on our test site to see how it compares with similar polycrystalline modules.

I was reading an opinion this morning in the New York times by Bob Herbert and it brought up some ancient history.  Jimmy Carter, during his administration, put solar hot water heaters on the roof of the White House.  According to the New York Times, Carter said,  “A generation from now, this solar heater can either be a curiosity, a museum piece, an example of a road not taken, or it can be a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people, harnessing the power of the sun to enrich our lives as we move away from our crippling dependence on foreign oil.”  Ronald Reagan took the panels down.

Why didn’t we, in the past 30 years, go on one of  the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people?  That, I suppose is a rhetorical question.  I lived through those years and remember the gas lines of Carter and the fading National Pride.  I had a friend of mine that was on Carter’s disaster in the desert–his bid to rescue the hostages in Iran.  I also remember what appeared to be a revitalization under Reagan.  I believe the primary reason that we didn’t go on this adventure, however, is that OPEC learned a significant lesson.

OPEC was scared.  For the first time, they realized that by embargoing oil to the West, the were ruining the very economies and very customers that bought their products.  They realized that they were awakening a sleeping giant that was going to invest heavily in alternate energy to eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.  OPEC had one choice and one choice only.  The opened up the spigot, drastically reduced the price of oil, they killed the alternate energy vision of the future and they put us back to sleep.

The ReAwakening

My reawakening occurred over a period of time.  I observed, as did most people, that more and more manufacturing was going to China.  More back office work was going to India.  Then, I read a book called “The Lexus and the Olive Tree” by Thomas Friedman.  This book put many of my experiences into context.  I now had a framework to understand Globalization.  The next Friedman book I read was “The World is Flat”.  This pretty much confirmed what I instinctively knew by now.  We, the United States of America, through our investments in fiber optics and the internet allowed the World to Compete in Science, Engineering and Manufacturing.  We were and are creating a new global middle class of 1.5  Billion people.  This wealth expansion is unprecedented in World history.  As this middle class grows, their consumption of resources and energy will explode.

Travels to The Coal Fields

In early 2005, we were traveling the country.  Some good friends brought their Hot Air Balloon to the Billings Hot Air Balloon festival.  Since we were in South Dakota at the time, we drove over to crew.  During that time, we met Ann Goddard Charter and her wonderful family.  Ann wrote the book, “Cowboys Don’t Walk – A tale of two”.  Here is the Amazon description.

“A college-educated debutante from St. Louis goes out west for a summer and ends up marrying a Wyoming cowboy, bear hunter and son of a horseman for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It sounds like a made-in-Hollywood romance, but it’s a true story, told compellingly by Anne Charter with help from oral history that husband Boyd left behind before he died in 1978. Their struggles with the land, animals, weather, wildfire, coal companies, politicians and one another make for a uniquely American chronicle.”

We went for a jeep tour on Anne’s ranch which must have been about 100 square miles–as far as you can see.  We saw a lot of Cattle, Wild Turkeys, Antelope  and Elk as well as some of the finest country that Eastern Montana has to offer.  We also saw something that struck me and still haunts me today.  There was a giant black seam of coal that protruded out of the ground.  That seam of coal and all of the coal under the ranch had been the object of a great political fight.  Apparently, Anne and her husband Boyd owned the land, but the US Government owned the coal under it.  The coal companies lobbied to win the coal rights under the land.  Apparently, their plan was to turn the Charter’s ranch into a giant open pit coal mine.  Anne fought them in Washington and won.

So, Where is All That Coal?

I remember being taught in High School that the United States had 250 years of coal underground.  Wow, that is a lot of coal.  Where is that coal.  I looked it up on a coal map.  My conclusion was that it would be politically impossible to strip mine that much of the United States and throw that many people off their land.  I became interested enough in this subject that I read a book by, Jeff Goodell, “Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future”.  This book cemented my opinion that not only will it be politically impossible to extract all that coal, it may be technically impossible to extract it cost effectively.  The coal we are extracting is now deeper and harder to get to.

How About Oil and Natural Gas

I believe that the amount of oil and natural gas in the ground is limited.  This seems overly simplistic, but if it is limited, then it will one day run out.  When will that happen?  For us the issue isn’t when it will run out but when will the cost to extract it make it more expensive than renewable energy.  There has been much written about the predictions of M. King Hubbert and I won’t rehash them.  I will just provide one of a thousand links.  Hubbert’s Peak and Peak Oil

Politics

One of the reasons I started writing this is that I read an article this morning about Meg Whitman at Greentechmedia.com.  Apparently, Meg wants to suspend one of the states regulations for curbing greenhouse gasses.  I agree with greentech that this would be a stunning mistake in the State of California.  Whether you believe in greenhouse gasses or not, green tech is going to be the engine that drives jobs in California.

We have let much of our Science, Engineering and Manufacturing slip through our hands.  It moved to China.  It moved to India. Instead of a vision for the future, Meg seems to be another politician trying to make us go to sleep again.

Well, I have been reawakened and I am not going to fall for that one trick pony again.

The Future

I don’t believe politicians like Meg Whitman will be part of our future.  I think that Southern California will become one of the energy jewels in the United States.  Instead of looking at Coal Maps, we will be looking at Solar Maps.

Over the past year, we have observed quite a few interesting trends in the solar industry.  In general, it appears that both the State and Federal governments have become more active promoting solar.

Federal Tax Credit

The Federal Government instituted an 8 year Investment Tax Credit of 30% for both Residential and Commercial Solar installations.

US Senate Bill to Promote 10 Million Solar Roofs

There has also been legislation introduced in the US Senate by Bernie Sanders (I-VT) which would provide for incentives and tax breaks designed to get 10 million solar roofs installed in the next 10 years.    While this bill is a long way from passing, the intent is clearly there.

PACE Financing

California has also been promoting Solar and other energy efficiency projects though a program called PACE.  The California Legislature passed AB811 which allows a city or county to use Property Taxes to fund Solar.  According to one of the leading PACE companies, Power House Service, Inc., “PACE is a new financing model to finance energy efficiency and renewable energy products on residential and commercial buildings. Its primary purpose is to remove the two biggest obstacles preventing homeowners and commercial property owners from installing energy improvements: high up-front costs and ownership-transfer concerns.

PACE is based on 100-year old, land-secured municipal financing which enables local governments to finance improvements. Bonds are issed and secured by special taxes or assessments. Property owners receive money to fund eligible energy efficiency or renewable energy products and voluntarily agree to pay an annual special tax or assessment to repay the loan.

In order for PACE financing to be available within your community, a city or county must form a “special tax district” or “assessment district” under authorizing legislation.”

California Civil Code 714 (Solar Rights Act)

California Civil Code 714 severely restricts obstacles that Home Owners Associations and Local Building Departments can use to stop installation of solar. While this has been in effect for 32 years and has nearly gone unchallenged during that period, Local Building officials and Local Fire Departments haven’t gotten the message.

Most of the local Building departments have been adding more and more obstacles to Solar installations.  For example, San Diego recently raised it’s Solar Permit fee from less than $100 to over $600.  One city in Orange County requires seismic engineering calcs in order to put solar on a roof.  Since most houses won’t pass this test, the building official has essentially killed solar installations in that city.

Another city routinely rejects permits by requiring  pages of minor corrections.  When those corrections are made and incorporated into the permit that is used in that city, another several pages of minor corrections are added to reject the new permit.  It is obvious that it is the city’s policy to reject all Solar permits the first time.

Orange County and many of the cities therein began using the OCFA guidelines for fire keep outs to restrict solar.  This move significantly reduced the usable roof space and impacted the number of solar installations in Orange County.  Recently, the OCFA decided that it would no longer review Solar Installations on Residential installations.  I suspect that there were a lot of citizens who became quite mad about the fact that they couldn’t put solar on their house.

At the same time, I’m hearing that there is a big push in San Diego to incorporate the fire guidelines.  If this is true, Solar Installations in San Diego could drop by up to 60% affecting green jobs and taking away a citizens right to put solar on his/her home.

In summary, it appears that the Federal and State governments are promoting solar and energy efficiency while at the same time, many local cities are putting on the brakes or trying to figure out how they can benefit economically from the trend.

I encourage people to speak to their local representatives to make sure they are being represented.

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.