Day 6 of Solar Install

This is the big day. All the panels and wiring are completed. The crew was Sarah, Ron, & Pete. Here is the inverter with the cover off so the DC can be wired in.

If you were wondering how the panels made it up on to the roof. It was nothing fancy, here are 3 pictures of Pete taking one up the ladder.

This day started with 10 panels up, here it is with 13.

16 panels.

17 panels.

18 panels.

19 panels.

After the 19th panel, things slowed down. They had to install the combiner. The combiner reduces the number of wires that come down from the array. Each string (4 in this case) has two wires. Rather than pull all 8 of these wires to the inverter, the wires go to the combiner then only these wires go to the inverter. Also, if I add another string or two later, no new wires need to be pulled to the inverter.


Here is a video clip of the final panel being placed.

The final panel is in. They double checked all the connections and things are looking good.

However, it is now nearly 5PM and the November sun is setting. You can see the Moon just behind Sarah. We power-on the system; the inverter runs its self-diagnostics and then does nothing. There is not enough sunlight to operate.

Since they want the system to be under observation for its first hour or so of power generation, it is powered off till tomorrow. They leave me with the power-on instructions and 'if thing go wrong' instructions and a phone number. So unless things do go horribly wrong, my next blog entry will be system power-on.

Today's Hours: 3 x 6 (10AM - 4:30 w/ lunch)
Total Hours: 62 Hours