Solar Shenanigans

In early November I flew to Dallas and helped my buddy Ryan install a solar array. Since he had a large low-slope metal roof on his garage, we decided that was the right place to put them. Ryan’s dad also helped and in two days, the three of us had hoisted three large stacks of panels up onto the roof, bolted them down, and wired them all together.

Then we pulled the feed wires onto the roof, hooked up the three strings and then spent a bunch of time futzing with the inverters, replacing optimizers, and updating the locations of panels whose optimizers had invalid serial numbers on them (pro tip, check them all on the ground beforehand). Then we hooked up his eGauge meter so he can monitor total production and consumption.

On day 3, the inspector showed up, checked a few things, asked some questions, and then approved the final inspection. Since then, Ryan’s solar array had been making me jealous. Between the much higher solar factor in Dallas and having more panels, his winter production is ~10x mine.