Thoughts on Solar by Run on Sun's Founder & CEO, Jim Jenal

We wrote recently about an unhappy experience for a homeowner when the solar power system installed by the previous owner destroyed itself in Pasadena’s big December windstorm.  Solar is just not a Do-It-Yourself project, and so, after conferring with the current homeowner we set out to Make it Right (with an obligatory shout-out to Mike Holmes).  We thought the contrast between what we found when we came out after the storm and what we have now left in its place, would be instructional.

First, a reminder of what we saw when we came out after the storm:

That’s angle iron attached to the now destroyed solar panels, with pieces of PVC pipe used as standoffs and a varied assortment of wood screws used to attach the entire mess, er, array to the roof.  Given that the screws weren’t even in the rafters, it is a surprise that the system stayed in place as long as it did.

We took a different approach in making this right.  We started by using real lag bolts - 5/16 x 3″ - to attach our 6″ standoffs to the roof and included proper flashings.

Each of those standoff is firmly attached to one of the roof rafters with two lag bolts, meaning that they are not going to pull out regardless of the wind that we receive.

The previous system used an old Xantrex GT3.0 inverter (although the particular model there was just older than those in the Xantrex inverter recall notice) so we decided to upgrade to Enphase micro-inverters.  (As we noted in the previous post, there are a fair number of trees around this site so micro-inverters will definitely improve the system’s yield.)  Here’s how the racking (Unirac Solarmount-I, aka, Clicksys), the micro-inverters and the continuous ground wire looked, just before we added the panels:

The prior array connected to the inverter by attaching a junction box directly onto the roof with a hole drilled through the roof to accept flex conduit that snaked back to the inverter.  There was no flashing, and the j-box ripped away from the roof in the storm.  We took a different approach, attaching our j-box to the rails and using EMT through a properly flashed roof opening.  The result looks good and will function properly in any weather.

(I particularly like how the conduit bends down toward the roof (to avoid the panels) and curves cleanly into the j-box.  Velvet just does lovely conduit work!)

So here it is, the final product:

The replacement system consists of 10 Sanyo 225 Watt solar panels driving 10 Enphase M210 micro-inverters.  More importantly for the present homeowner, this is a system that he can rely upon for many years to come - and isn’t that why you hire the pros?  So please, don’t Do-it-Yourself, hire a pro who will Do-it-Right!