What a great day it was last week when the crew from Solar City called me to come check out the completed installation of our solar power system on our home. The First Solar panels had all gone in, the electrical had all been run, the inverter installed, and everything tested out.

Now it was time to turn on the system and show the homeowner (me) that it was working fine. Mark from Solar City showed me the inverter control panel and pointed out how the system was producing power ( although not a lot because it was late in the day on a late fall day) but never the less it was making power from the sun. He then showed me the electric meter on my house and you could clearly see that even though the system was not putting out full capacity yet it was slowing down the meter measuring our house electrical consumption.

He caught me with a wide smile on my face I have to admit.

Please watch the video below to get the details of the system as well as hear a bit about how installing these systems makes guys like Mark feel about their job.

It is pretty cool that these green jobs can be created by solar and other alternative energy options, that give the workers a feeling of doing right in addition to making them a living. We have not done a lot of that kind of job creation in this country for awhile and this sort of thign should be encouraged and celebrated as much as possible.

The installation of our Solar City solar power system for our home has moved forward nicely. One of the things we had to have done was a bit of upgrading to the rafters in our attic so that our roof can be structurally sound and support the panels effectively.

We have a low slope roof and thus our attic is pretty tight with barely enough room to stand in the middle of the house to very tight out on the edges of the roof. The Solar City crew ended up taking out my solar fan and cutting a larger hole in our roof in order to access the attic, load in lumber for the upgrade and do the job. Dave and the crew had to work in tight conditions but thankfully the warm weather we had been having cooled down on the rafter day and so it was not roasting in there.

After they had completed the rafter upgrade Octavio from Blue Turtle came by to seal up the footers for the panels and the reinstalled solar fan which the Solar City guys had used as access to the attic. It is a three step process, one to install the wetsuit coating around all the areas where the roof has been penetrated by bolts, conduit, and the fan. Then there is the primer coat of solar reflective paint, followed by the final coat of the solar reflective paint.

Next comes the panel install on Monday of this coming week, installation of the electrical connections, and inverter installation on the side of our house. If all goes well this next week we should be all set and ready for city inspections and sign off by PG&E so that we can turn on the system. Fingers crossed that his will only take a few weeks to get the official blessing for our system to be generating power for our household.