We’ve derailed from the original topic, but as long as this is a solar thread, I’ll add a little more info.
Yes, when getting solar it’s all about the company that will do the work, and secondly about what equipment they install. First you will need to trust them to some extent, or get multiple quotes. Some will recommend less or more capacity than you need. This probably isn’t a straightforard formula though, because it depends on your household usage, electric utility rates, and local laws.
We did not go with the first vendor we worked with. He was a local contractor that knows his stuff, but is one guy with part-time helpers. A good friend of ours worked with him a lot, and provided the recommendation. But after starting the process, it started to become obvious that our project might take a very long time to get completed, with possible long gaps and other unknown gaps and hassles. So we cancelled with him.
We chose The Solar Company, based on most of the neighbors on our street all having gone through the same rep, who lives in our neighborhood. He no longer works directly for them, but still helps with his neighbors, doing the initial consultation and getting us connected with the company. Everyone seemed completely satisfied with their experiences. We chose Sunpower equipment (panels and inverter gear), because it’s a little more efficient and considered the top brand available to us. Our system is 7.8 kw, which seems like a good fit so far, though we’re still waiting on our first post-activation PG&E bill.
After one or two brief planning visits, there’s a gap while they file for building permits, do the drawings of the project and otherwise get everything prepared. This took about 3 weeks (building anything in California involves at least a moderate amount of paperwork and hassle). After that, they schedule a date to deliver the equipment. By separating this from the work days, it removes the hassles of it not showing up on schedule. The whole set of gear fit on a single pallet (26 panels and the electrical gear), which they stored in our garage. Then they schedule two days to complete the project (at least for our fairly normal house). The first day ended up being the day after delivery, which was fine by me, and they got all the construction done on that day. Then there was another wait, for PG&G to process the paperwork sent to them to “license” our power generating facility. It’s like a separate inspection from the county one. That followed after, and then we turned it on. There was one small hassle; the inverter (wall-mounted in the garage, in our case) needs an Internet connection so it can be monitored (by PG&E as well as me). The powerline network adapter they installed interfered with the one we already had (which I expected it to do), so one additional visit was needed, where I convinced the guy to just hardwire it from our modem , through the wall of my office and into the garage. Now it works great!
We chose not to get involved with storage batteries for these reasons:
- The technology is still pretty new, and much better stuff will probably be available in a few years if we're interested
- The market is very, very new so there may be a lot of shaking out to do
- We're spending enough at the moment; in time we will have a better idea how important/valuable/economical storing our own power will be
The Sunpower app on my phone will show me what the system is putting out at any time. Later I hope to add a module that ties in the PG&E meter so we can see how much we're selling back to them, and our day to day savings.
