[RE-wrenches] electrical permit requirements
William Miller
william at millersolar.com
Tue Jun 15 15:43:38 PDT 2010
Jeff:
Good point made here. We too became concerned about lax enforcement some
years ago. We started inviting ourselves to the Building Inspector trade
group meetings. We submitted a permit application check list to the local
jurisdictions. It sat on desks for a while, but eventually the lead plan
checker was asked to make a presentation to the trade group and the
handiest document was our check list. It became adopted.
Bill Brooks has worked on this issue and has resources.
I suggest you start a dialog and then be quick and thorough on the follow
up and you can have a positive influence.
William Miller
At 03:12 PM 6/15/2010, Jeff Yago wrote:
>Well, this should start up a fire storm.
>
>I will not mention the county or state as we do work in many other areas,
>but today I stopped by a county building permit office to apply for a
>permit to install a grid-tie solar system that includes battery backup and
>generator, which we are adding to an existing very high end home. I will
>also add this is a very well populated and modern city where the county
>offices are located.
>
>I walked in with my permit application which included the permit form, a
>CAD drawing of the solar system wiring showing all dis-connects, wire
>sizes, conduit sizes and connections to the existing home wiring
>system. We also included a spreadsheet form we have that shows all the
>calculations for the solar array to inverter wiring and inverter string
>sizing including high and low temperature and conduit adjusted voltage and
>currents from the array based on the record temperatures for that
>location. We also include a cut sheet for the modules and the inverter(s)
>which show they have all the required code, IEEE, NEC and other labeling
>requirements. Just to be complete, we also include an analysis printout
>from the inverter manufacturer showing the correct match-up of number of
>modules, number of strings, and estimated yearly performance.
>
>The clerk looked at this stack of documentation, then returned it all to
>me and asked for the $30 permit fee. She said there is no plan review for
>anything like this unless its a commercial electrical project.
>
>I guess with all the stories of really bad experiences of others on this
>list with inspectors not knowing what they are looking for and stupid
>permit rules I should be pleased this went so smoothly.
>
>However, I fear this is the kind of lax enforcement that will allow my
>competition to keep under-pricing me as they can get away with installing
>cheap products and not taking into account hight and low temperature
>effect on modules , length of wire run on voltage drop, and string sizing
>on the selection of wire, conduit, dis-connects, fuses, and inverters.
>
>I also fear this is an accident waiting to happen that will give us all
>installing solar in this county a black eye. So, do I have this
>discussion with the inspection office as I plan to do, or is this a fight
>for another day.
>
>Jeff Yago
>DTI Solar
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