I have been publishing articles about the installation of our solar power system (here and here). These have been more popular than I expected and I've been receiving questions, both online and offline, so I'll provide more details in this article.
All of the photos in this article have higher resolution than I normally use and you can click on a photo to see them full-size.
The introductory photo above shows the array of 22 panels on the garage roof. Partly by luck and partly by plan this roof faces south and the parking area in front of it is clear of trees. During the site survey it was suggested that we remove one tree that will partly shade the array. Coincidentally that tree was already planned for removal because it was swaying ominously over the house during tropical storm Irene. When we had it removed I found that the base was infested with ants, hollowing it out, so I'm glad it's gone.
The next photo shows the mounting details.
In this photo you can see all four mounting rails
Since cost is the primary constraint to more use of solar power, all of that somewhat expensive extruded aluminum might be questionable but probably not when you consider that the panels have a 25-year warranty.
This photo shows how the wiring penetrates the garage roof and heads down to the basement. I guess it must be metal-shielded because of the high voltage (400+ volts).
The conduit leads down to the inverter, which creates 240 volts AC, in the basement. Here is the photo of that from my last article
The cable coming out of the top of the electric meter goes to the main breaker panel on the other side of the basement. You might notice that all of this stuff is outdoor-rated, even the inverter. I would never have considered putting the inverter outside. I even resisted putting it on the wall in the garage. I later discovered that the inverter emits a hum/vibration when it is running. Our guest bedroom is adjacent to that garage wall so I'm glad we ended up with it in the basement storage room on a concrete wall.
Here is the bottom half of my main breaker panel
The lower right breaker, with the red label, is where the solar system feeds electricity to the house. If the solar system produces more power than the house is using it will go out of the house into the National Grid lines. Yes, the meter "runs backward", after they install a new meter with that capability.
The grey box below the breaker panel is a monitoring system provided with the solar system that measures electricity produced. It connects to my Internet hub. I guess I will be able to get information on the web somewhere. Note that this is also exterior-rated though it is mounted in the basement.
That monitoring system is also somewhat redundant with the energy usage monitoring system that I already have, the two small black boxes on the right. It probably isn't really necessary but they sort of have one package that they install without asking questions.
(In case you're curious, that small black box below the breaker panel is a surge protector, unrelated to the solar system.)
I think that covers all of the details of the system. In my next article, over the weekend, I will talk about cost.
