We talk about the steps involved in finalizing solar installation and activation, including setting up billing and net metering, connecting to the grid, the final inspection and approval phase, and post-installation paperwork and energizing the system.
John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher and I’m here today with Brian Sadler, Vice President at Solaris Renewables, a solar company in Massachusetts, providing premium solar and storage technologies with exceptional customer service; and designing, installing, and servicing solar systems in Massachusetts, Southern New Hampshire and Maine. And today we’re talking about finalizing your solar installation. Welcome, Brian.
Brian Sadler: Hi John. How are you today?
The Steps in Finalizing Your Solar Installation
John: Good, thanks. Brian, what are the steps that are involved in finalizing your solar installation, really from the installation process through activation?
Brian: Yeah, good question. There’s a process and some nuance, and we want to make sure we’re setting good expectations with our customers because there’s a lot of excitement. We finally got the system installed and what happens now?
So once the system’s installed, we then call for inspections. And this is basically dictated to us, the schedule, by the cities and towns. And then after we have the inspection process, we submit what’s called a Certificate of Completion to the utilities. After they process that, they send out a team on their behalf to swap the customer’s meter out.
Once the meter is swapped out, they again process that piece of the puzzle, and they issue what’s called Permission To Operate, or commonly called a PTO letter. Once the PTO letter is received by us, and the customer also gets that as well, simultaneously, then basically that’s the permission to energize the system and they’re able to turn it on.
The Installation Process
John: Okay. So let’s talk about each one of those steps a little bit more. In terms of the actual installation, what’s involved in that and what’s maybe a timeline that a customer can expect?
Brian: Right, so the installation itself can take anywhere from one to five days, depending on scope and how complex the system is. Typically speaking, our projects take two to three days because we take a lot of care in terms of the wire management, equipment placement, things like that. But basically that consists of a roof team installing the mounts, rails, panels, roof boxes and on-roof wiring; bringing that system all together to make sure we’re meeting code, bringing that wire down to the inverter, which is the electronics of the system that takes that power from the solar panels and makes it so our homes can use it.
And then there’s the interaction with the customer’s electrical system and basically different types of connection points based on that. And again, these systems are 100% customized to each individual home and homeowner, and it depends on some of the options they may have as well, so that’s the bulk of the installation process. And again, if we’re installing batteries or smart panels or doing additional electrical work, adding EV chargers or any other peripherals to the system, that just adds to the complexity and the time as well to install it.
The Inspection Process
John: And then the inspection is next. Is that inspection by you or is that inspection by somebody certified with the state, or what’s involved in that?
Brian: We sure wish it was just by us, but unfortunately we have to get inspections from the local, what they call AHJ or Authority Having Jurisdiction, which is the town and their inspectors. So for all projects, we’re going to have to have an electrical inspection first and a building inspection as well. And sometimes the building inspection is less informal and they will just want to see that we did a decent job, there is indeed solar panels on the roof and it looks like that we built it to spec.
In terms of the electrical, it’s a little more detailed and nuanced given that we’re actually connecting into a customer’s electrical service. And there is an interaction, ultimately, with the grid. So again, national electric code, local code, and Massachusetts code also needs to be met. And we have pretty stringent code here in the Northeast in general, high standard of living, and due to that, there’s a lot of regulations and protections for all of our consumers.
So once we call in for the inspections and those are scheduled, they’re basically dictated to us by the town, all towns, with larger towns and cities it’s more of a straightforward process, but there’s some smaller towns and cities that might only work one day a week or only in the mornings. And so we have to, A) schedule that. We have to meet their schedule, then we have to coordinate with the homeowner to make sure we can make that happen. And sometimes it seems kind of hairy, but we always seem to get it done and homeowners seem to be amenable to open their doors and be flexible for us to be able to stand those inspections.
John: Is that something that you can kind of schedule ahead of time? If you know that you’re going to be installing the system on Monday and Tuesday, then maybe you schedule that for Wednesday or Thursday, something along those lines, or do you have to wait until you’re done with the installation before you contact them and schedule that?
Brian: We generally have to wait for that to be done because, given the nature of construction and weather in the Northeast, we also don’t always know. So we might have every intention on finishing on a certain day, but sometimes something happens or we get a weather event and we’re not able to finish that day so it carries into another day.
John: Right.
Brian: We also need available sunlight, enough sunlight to activate the system and be able to commission it. So if we finish too late in the day, it’s also depending on the time of year right now, in the winter time, it might be dark at 4:00. And so if we’re not completely done, don’t have enough available sunlight, we really can’t commission that system, so we’ll need to send someone back to do so. And then if we had to schedule an inspection for the next morning, it might not work out.
We also need to have available staff, and given that we’re trying to cover 351 towns and cities in Massachusetts — well, we don’t cover them all, but we cover a vast majority of them and then a lot of Southern New Hampshire and Maine, so we have to make sure that we have coverage. So if we have one that might be in Southern Massachusetts and then the next one’s in Maine and then the other one’s in New Hampshire and they’re backed up back to back, we can’t always cover that, so we have to be mindful of that as well. But yeah, generally speaking, we finish, we call in, and they tell us, and it could be tomorrow morning or it could be next week and we never really know until we make that call.
The Certificate of Completion
John: Right. So the next step is to submit to the utility for a certificate of completion. What’s involved in that process?
Brian: Well, actually the certificate of completion is usually signed by the electrical inspector at inspection.
John: I see, okay.
Brian: And we take that certificate of completion, we submit that, usually electronically, to the utility. The utility then processes that, basically saying that the electrical inspector signed off on it and now the utility can process that to put them on the meter swap list.
Swapping the Meter
John: Okay. And so then swapping the meter then is next. What’s the timeframe usually in getting the utility to come out and swap the meter?
Brian: Again, it depends on utility, and it depends on location in some cases, so more heavily populated areas, it might be a little quicker. We do have 41 municipal light plants or individual town utilities in Massachusetts and they can act quicker and slower. It kind of depends as well. If solar is really heavily adopted in the area, the meter swap in whatever utility it is tends to be quicker. They tend to be more equipped for that.
But we usually tell folks within two weeks. Sometimes it’s really quickly and it’s within a few days. And other times we’ve had, through the pandemic and material shortage, there was actually a shortage of meters, and we had customers in some cases waiting even up to a month and things like this. So typically speaking it’s within a couple weeks that they’re swapped out, but I would say very often it’s within the week.
John: And is that swapping the meter swapping the standard meter for a two-way meter that allows the utility to see how much energy you’re selling back to the grid? Is that the idea?
Brian: Absolutely. Great point. And I should have highlighted that. It’s what we call a “net meter” or bi-directional meter. So that meter now is able to measure not only what we’re pulling from the grid, but what we’re supplying back to the grid in times of overproduction. And then over the course of a month, it’s going to net out, have we supplied more to the grid or has the grid supplied more to us and therefore our billing or statement of credits, the give and take of credits will be based on that net meter reading.
Permission to Operate
John: And then the next step is getting permission to operate. Where do you get that from?
Brian: That’s again, from the utility. So after their meter is swapped, typically they start that process right away. The employee from the utility goes back to their truck, for instance, punches it into their system. And then typically that process happens within 24 hours to 48 hours at the longest. We will get issued an email letter that will go to us and to the customer simultaneously saying, congratulations, you have permission to operate. Or like a lot of industries, we have a lot of acronyms, PTO is what it’s often called, which is where the customer now has the permission, final permission and approval from the utility to energize that system to be interconnected with the grid.
Energizing the System
John: And so that final step of energizing the system, what’s involved in that? Is it literally just flipping a switch or is there more to it?
Brian: It is. So we tend to leave it, we leave the system on, in terms of inside, so all the breakers on, the equipment ready to be activated, and then on the outside of the house due to rapid shutdown and national electric code, we need to have what’s called a disconnect, which is a knife switch lever. It usually has a big red handle on the end of it, very visible, by the customer’s meter, so that it can be readily found by the utility or by the fire department if there were ever to be an emergency concern on the property.
So the customer usually knows where it is, but if not, we give them a phone call and direct them to that meter and just tell them to, like you said, flip the switch and turn that lever from the down or off position to the up or on position. And that’s a highlight for every customer who’s been signed up for solar. Like, “When’s it going to happen? When am I… Okay, now I got it, but when’s it going to be actually, when am I going to be live?” And that’s the moment of excitement and clarity when you can turn that thing on.
John: And that’s kind of fun that you leave that for the customer to be able to go out and do themselves. They must feel some satisfaction of going outside and actually physically pushing that switch and saying, “All right, I’m live now.”
Brian: Absolutely. And we’ve had customers send us photos and videos. We had a great one of their kid flipping the switch and jumping around. And so yeah, that’s a point of excitement and a high point for the journey of going solar.
Post-Installation Paperwork and Documentation
John: Are there any other steps, post-installation and post-energizing, that need to happen? Any final paperwork or documentation requirements?
Brian: There are a couple pieces. That’s really dependent upon what the current incentive programs are and what utility you’re in, what state you’re in as well. So for us here in New England, we can take advantage of what’s called renewable energy credits. That is an income stream that is paid directly to the customers and investors of a solar system. And after we have the Permission To Operate letter, we submit that, along with a form, and then basically we take care of that paperwork, we set them up with an account, and then they wait for their system to be registered in the state, and then they can realize that incentive as well.
Some of those 41 municipal light plants that I talked about, some of them have really strong solar programs and includes a rebate. And they’ll basically trade for those renewable energy credits over a period of time, they’re going to pay you directly, up front, a rebate. So again, paperwork needs to be filed, that final permission to operate, and they might want access to the monitoring, things like this, whatever those pieces are. We handle that on behalf of the customer and make sure that’s submitted as well.
And then otherwise, it’s really dependent on the company. So in our case, aside from that call and kind of what we have them set up to energize the system, we then make sure that we have their monitoring set up, they take possession of that as well, and then we send them what we call a solar kit. That solar kit includes everything to do with their project, all the paperwork, spec sheets, their plans, their actual agreement, warranty information, a contact list, so kind of an all-encompassing piece. It’s an electronic document, but that’s what we send to each customer.
And then about a month later we schedule what we call a walkthrough, a solar walkthrough, with their project developer. And that’s an opportunity for them to review the first month of their system with their new solar electric bill and see what the initial impact has been, and then answer all those questions because, as time goes on, you don’t know until you know. We thought going solar is going to be a great idea and we want to understand how this works. There’s a lot of information. And then to get it realized, and we want to make sure that customers really understand all the pieces and parts, we review all the incentive pieces, the monitoring, together, their first electric bill with the impact of solar and put a nice bow on it.
John: All right. Well that’s all really great information. Thanks again for speaking with me today, Brian.
Brian: Thanks for having me, John. Appreciate it.
John: And for more information, you can visit the website at solarisrenewables.com or call 781-270-6555.