[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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