For any of you that are curious about what’s involved in permitting your solar installation, I wanted to just offer an overview of the process, and just share my experience and hopefully that will help anyone that may be thinking about in doing a solar project. We are going to focus specifically on solar power permits.
Getting a Solar Permit is Easy
First point is it was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be. In this post I’m setting out the basic steps; every city’s going to be a little bit different, but there’s probably 95% of this that is going to be the same city to city.
The first step is you go to your city and pull out the permit applications. You’ll need a building permit application and an electrical permit application. You fill those out.
Step two, you submit. They’ll want a plot plan, a single-line wire diagram, and then the manufacturer specification sheets for your panel, your inverter and your rail mounting system.
Does it Take a Long Time to Get a Solar Permit Approved?
Then your city will review and approve the permits. It took my city five days, and after they approved the permits, I just hopped in my car and drove back down to the permit office, picked up the permits and began work.
Once I completed the project I called the city inspector to schedule a final inspection and that was it. There was only one inspection, and that was at the end.
Here is more detail on the first step. You go to the city permit office, they give you their permit applications for their building permit and then their electrical permit. Fill these out. It’s important to make a note when you describe the project that there’s no modification to your roof required, otherwise it gets a little bit more complicated, but we notated that, so we should be all good.
Page two of your typical application is all owner installed stuff, so you do not need a licensed contractor, if you’re doing it yourself, at least in my area.
Solar Electrical Permit
The electrical permit application is pretty easy, just a one pager. We just indicate that I am putting in one 20 amp double pole breaker and that will be back feeding 240 vAC into that one double pole 20 amp breaker and my main panel.
My city doesn’t charge us for solar permits, which is pretty great. They waive all permitting charges for solar projects as part of a solar expansion initiative.
Next, step two. Once you’ve filled out your permit applications, they want you to submit a plot plan, a single-line wire diagram, and the manufacturer spec sheets.
Plot Plan
The single-line, plot plan and the wire diagram are the only things you have to actually do on your own.
In fact, I even pulled an old one, an old plot plan from a previous job on my house, I think we were doing our porch or something, so I just took that and modified it, but basically it’s just a diagram and dimensions of the property, and what you’re doing, where you’re installing the gear.
I’m indicating on the diagram the proposed panel location. Doesn’t have to be to scale, at least not in my town, and then they just want a description on the left side. They want to know the kind of house, pitched roof or not, composite shingle, and basically a description of the job.
Single Line Wire Diagram
Once you do that, you have to do the single-line wire diagram. I actually located this on the internet and changed it for myself. Basically, just showing the panels, 225 watt panels, DC from the panel to the inverter, and that it terminates, goes through a junction box on the roof, and then terminates at the double pole 20 amp breaker. I also handed in a detailed wire schematic.
Manufacturer Specifications for Solar Permit Applications
Then the spec sheets, the manufacturer specification sheets. You can get them on the manufacturer’s webpage. I probably pulled more than needed, but I again figure better to be safe than sorry, so I submitted everything I thought might apply.
Solar Permit Application
Once you’ve submitted your applications and your plot plan, and spec sheets, then the planning office reviews it. It took our locality a couple of days to review and then approve the permits.
Then I went down to the permit office and pulled the actual permit card. Then you begin your project, there are no inspections until the very end so they’re not going to come out, at least not in my area and inspect anything, they do it at the end of the project.
After I finished the job, I called them up, scheduled the inspection, they came out, they approved it, and that was it.
A last note about what they actually do when they come out. I got the ”by the book” guy, there’s two guys that do inspections in my city and one guy’s a little bit easier than the other guy, but I got the harder guy and I can tell you it was probably ten or twelve minutes for the whole inspection.
Final Solar Permit Inspection
The inspector just goes out, looks at some things on the roof, your panels, they don’t check your work in as much detail as one might expect. I thought they were going to examine the clips and everything, they really didn’t go into that much detail. They are really concerned about the labeling though, so you’ve got to insure you appropriately label all of your conduits and the solar disconnects and all of that stuff.
That’s basically the whole process, in a nutshell, so hopefully this will help people out there that are considering going out and doing a permit solar installation. I hope you learned something about solar power permits in Your city.
