So you want to install solar? Our experience

About a year ago we started investigating rooftop solar photovoltaics.

Why?
- we believe everyone should be energy independent (in fact we are aiming to generate a lot more than we consume; this fits into our goal to become better than self-sufficient - net positive!)
- the roof is typically a underutilized space
- we also investigated a green roof - it would've been the more ecologically friendly option but decided against it because a) requires more attention to maintain b) permits may have been more difficult and c) we were looking to produce electrical output

There's some debate as to whether solar panels are actually net positive. Based on my estimates I believe that overall its life cycle after accounting for total cost of production and ownership, there is definitely a net benefit but the scope of that discussion is outside what is covered in this document.

After doing a bunch of research and finding a lot of good information, we decided to install the panels ourselves. I would encourage people to seriously look at DIY, as the whole process was actually not as bad as it first seemed. Especially with the wealth of videos and information out there. We believe in Open Source and spreading knowledge so we will update this page to share as much information as we can about the process.

A Roof Anchor and Harness was Critical

Our installation is a grid-tie ~5kW system with a single inverter. A lot of the following information may be valuable for those signing up for the Ontario MicroFIT program.

Here is a general list of steps that we followed; (Enersource has a good list also: MicroFit Process)

1. Conduct preliminary feasibility, design and engineering of the system

• rough estimates of roof space will give you an estimate on how many panels you can install
• seek local vendors for solar and electrical parts
• first pass at a bill of materials and costing

2. Apply to OPA(IESO) for the MicroFIT application

• pretty straight forward application, most tedious part is that you need to print off a document from the Land Registry Office
• application can take some time so need to allot about a month, other applications can be started in parallel

3. Apply to local utility for approval to generate

• need to provide a single line diagram such as ours below;

Single Line Diagram of Our Solar Installation

4. Check gate: Upon approvals from IESO and local utility - CONTINUE! If we didn't get approval we would've changed and done a smaller off-grid system instead. One important thing to note here is that the IESO will provide you an offer to connect, and it expires in 180 days, so you must complete your project in that time (ie you must complete up to step 8 below) otherwise your offer expires

5. Apply to local municipality for building permit

• This part was the most difficult as you need to have all your drawings ready to go. Each municipality will have different drawing requirements so these may not be relevant for others but I'll include our drawings here to help anyone looking for examples (there are other examples online) 
• SitePlan 
• PlanView 
• SideView 
• Roof Framing Plan
• You will likely need an engineer to review and approve your design, this part was more difficult but with enough reading you can figure it out. There are engineers online who can approve your design, we just followed the document here to design our roof framing plan and calculate point loads, wind and snow loads, etc

6. Buy it & Build it!

Showing Rails and Flashing from Kinetic Solar

• I made a basic sheet to keep track of costs and ROI even though we would've gone ahead regardless of the economics. If you want to see a breakout of all our costs see the sheet here; Terra Thunder Solar Bill of Materials & Cost Sheet
• Some costs which were higher than expected, one was the cost of the solar panel brackets, as well as the cost for wiring as typically the PV wiring and ground wiring required is more expensive than standard wiring 
• Some installation items to note: to comply with ESA; the outdoor DC wiring needs to be UL PV Cable or TECK cable at least #10AWG, and need to match colour standards so RED for positive and BLACK for negative
• All the rails need to be bonded (connected electrically) together and the ground needs to be connected back to the street (the basement water pipe). The ground wire used must have some green cladding and be at least #6AWG - personally I think this ground requirement is overkill and adds additional cost
• Wire connectors also need to be the solar standard MC4 type, I bought them from my solar distributor for $5 a pair. I only needed about 6 pairs so that isn't a big cost, you could probably order online for cheaper but I was in a rush
• For our installation we used about 60' of RED PV Wire and 60' of BLACK PV Wire, 150' of Ground Wire and a 30' length of 4/10 TECK cable

Photo of Grid Tie Inverter Installed (Old Single Meter is still there)

7. Connect it to the grid and inspect it (ESA)

• At this point I had installed the PV panels and the Solar Inverter. To complete the grid tie in, a certified electrician needs to work with your local utility to 1) Disconnect your house power 2) Install your new meter base and disconnect switch 3) Re-install your house meter 4) Power everything back on. 
• I learned that is it very important to properly schedule a disconnect date for this to happen with your local utility, in my case I called in just before Xmas (around Dec 22nd) and didn't get a disconnect date until Jan 23rd! If I was doing it again I would definitely have scheduled it ahead, and if you end up missing the date you can be waiting another month!
• Before you can schedule a disconnect, the local utility wants to know you've taken out the required ESA permits so you will need to provide them an ESA notification number, I did some parts of the electrical myself (the parts that don't require certified electrician)
• So a note on the whole ESA inspection process; because I did the DC portion myself, (wiring from panels to inverter) I had to take out my own inspection permit for this, and the electrician took 2 separate inspection permits: 1) Re-connection of the existing house electrical and 2) the AC portion of the solar microFIT project *THIS WAS A CRITICAL DISTINCTION* as I found that my original electrician had not taken out the right permits and so I would've been screwed come disconnect day, thankfully I found a new electrician in time to do it right. From my experience an electrician who is an ESA ACP is the right way to go hands down. The ESA inspection process is quite tedious, it took about a week to schedule the inspection and I had to call daily to reschedule. If you have more time you can set a hard date but since I was under the gun I had to call every day to be put on the daily inspection (not guaranteed)
• The actual electrical installation process took only a day, it was complicated by a couple things such as having to move a downspout and the fact that even though I ordered the correct dual meter base as per the local utility, there are 2 different models (left hand/right hand) the model I had being left hand which didn't fit my installation well (electrician had to spend more time moving things) and local utility seemed to complain about it (even though it is their fault for listing that as an acceptable model)
• If you note on the new meter base, there are black labels on there (lamacoids) which I printed from a local engraver shop, each utility will have different requirements so that will need to be checked

Left: New disconnect switch with fuses (connected after the Inverter before the new meter)

Right: new dual meter base, existing meter installed back and as you can see on the right side, the base is empty waiting for a new bi directional meter that is supplied by the local utility

• Something interesting to note about the electrical portion; even though you've purchased these parts, the local utility will take over ownership basically after they've been on site. So if a fuse blows in the disconnect switch, I'm on the hook to buy a replacement but I can't get in there unless I call the utility to remove their lock for me to replace them
• After the disconnect date, it still took about 2 weeks for the local utility to install the 2nd meter and lock up the disconnect switch

8. Final Connection and Information Back-and-Forth

• The final part of the connection was actually the MOST painful:
• Upon successful ESA inspection of both DC and AC parts of your installation, a "CONNECTION AUTHORIZATION" is generated by ESA. ESA will send this directly to your local utility but for some STUPID reason you don't get a copy. Even though IESO requires you to get this document to submit to complete your contract. SO....you need to fill out a "FREEDOM OF INFORMATION" request to ESA and pay $60. I think this is ultra retarded, essentially they need to know you've passed the inspection but they don't accept the Certificate of Inspection that you get and want this instead. And the information on there is so basic! (Attached below) You would think after filing out an FOI you would get something classified about aliens or political sex scandals or some such....

Connection Authorization Pretty Much is This. WTF I could've told you this information, this provides no value???

• After the connection authorization, IESO will still request additional (they didn't tell me what) information, I had to followup several times to ensure the local utility provided this
• Once the Connection Authorization is complete, IESO updates your status from Pending Connection to Connection Complete and will send you the finalized contract. Here's a copy of my contract

9. Inspect it (local municipality)

• Although we scheduled an final inspection with the city, the inspector came and pretty much just asked for a certificate of installation as they are not qualified to inspect it, so we generated a letter with an engineer stamped signoff saying everything was installed as per design and meets code

10. Sit back and enjoy the sunshine.

• Flipping the switch finally was a great feeling. After configuring the inverter for about an hour you're ready to rock! It's web connected now so it sends data to a cloud service every minute or so
• There's a mobile and web app too, if you want to see my system's real-time output please see my page here; https://www.solarweb.com/Home/System/598e2c84-2336-4336-902d-a5a6016b1715

Other links that were useful;

Amped Solar MicroFIT Documents