Final Solar

Solar Panels are Finally Generating Power

If you have read our blogs in the past, you may remember an intro-to-solar blog in January, then a solar update in May.  Well, here is the final of the saga.

To quickly bring you up to speed with the last two blogs, we got solar panels from a commercial building where the business was relocating. We removed the entire system and stored it in the garage for months until we got through the permitting obstacles with the county and PGE. 

We finally got them up and running! The challenge was that Greg did almost all of it by himself including high voltage electrical back to the panel, internet connections, troubleshooting wiring issues, and commissioning the system. Clackamas County has never seen a homeowner do this before and didn’t know how to approve it. In fact, they asked that Greg use a solar company to look over the work and provide necessary consultation. This was pretty minimal, but the County called them twice and had in-house meetings trying to figure out, ‘what are we going to do with this guy?’. The final inspection from the county came about a month ago. Then PGE had to come in and change the meter out for a Net Meter. This new meter allows them to track how much power the solar panels are creating and putting into their grid. Just like a traditional meter, it also tracks how much power the house uses. We then receive a bill for the difference. It will be interesting to see how it turns out. We are hopeful that our bill will be about 25% of normal. If we are careful, this system might cover all of our power requirements.

During sunnier months, our bill should be zero with credits building to cover the less sunny months.  Months continue to roll over until March 31^st.  At that point, any credit we may still have after the dark winter months is donated to those in need. For us, we do not anticipate having any credit by that point, but if we do, we are glad they donate it to those in need.

We will let you know how things go…