Behind me are some townhomes. A townhome is a human dwelling where similar buildings share a
wall and people live side by side. Today we're going to be installing some solar panels on the
top, but not just any panels. This technology will allow us to have electricity even if the grid is
gone - effectively putting us off grid in the middle of a city without batteries...at least as
long as the sun is out. I have a lot of explaining to do and installing so let's get started.
[Intro]
Today we are installing a 5.5 kilowatt solar array, and I'll get to all the paperwork mumbo
jumbo in a second. First we'll install the panels because that's much more interesting.
Even though the pitch of this roof isn't very steep,
it is very high off the ground so we are tying off and using harnesses with anchor
points that we've screwed into the peak. Safety is pretty important and I have
broken my wrist before falling off a ladder, and I do not want to repeat that ever again.
Yeah! Woo!
I am working with Solar Wholesale again since they are a one stop shop for an entire solar
package and everything I need for this job. And the biggest perk of course is that they
handle all the paperwork mumbo jumbo so I don't have to. All of the solar panels
we're installing today are on a southern facing roof. Since we're in the northern hemisphere it
means they get more sun time. However, since we are also installing a solar backup today,
it could also be worth our time to put some panels on an eastern facing roof,
and some panels on a western facing roof so we get more sunlight as the sun goes down,
and as it rises in the morning because we only have backup power when the sun is shining,
until we add batteries, but they are expensive so we'll do that later.
Scoping out the valley we can see there are actually quite a lot of solar panels on these
townhomes. A bunch on buildings over there. Here on these houses. Some over there as well. A lot
of these...when you have a townhome, a lot of the approvals...the first round of approvals,
come from the HOA. Not every HOA approves of solar panels, but I would say the majority of them
are coming around to the idea. The HOA in this particular neighborhood had a rule that there were
no solar panels allowed until I asked, and then they said okay. Sometimes that's all it takes.
Installing the panels is actually super easy. I've made a couple videos on this in the past.
We find the joist using a hammer.
And once we find one, it's relatively easy to find the rest since they are equally spaced.
It's not too big of a deal if we drill a hole and miss the joists because the
flashing we'll put down in a second will cover up any mistakes we might have made.
Now that we've found the joists and we've added the flashing underneath the shingles,
it's time to install the snap and rack system. The whole system is held onto
the roof with a giant lag going through an L-foot, through the flashing, into the joists,
and can withstand 105 mile an hour winds. We don't see many hurricanes here in Utah.
You'll notice that the flashing has a little lip, and the lag has a little rubber washer
as well on the top. And so when the whole thing is tightened down, it's watertight and no liquid will
be getting underneath the shingles. You'll also notice with each of these supports with the joists
running this direction, we have them staggered so the weight is distributed across different
joists. And of course, all of this information is found in a customized plan set for your specific
project from the link in the description. It makes things a whole lot easier. Here is where
the perks of the snap and rock system start to show themselves. As we lift the rails up
onto the roof and snap them into place, things start to move really quickly. The little L-feed
can be adjusted up and down to compensate for any fluctuations in the roof surface,
keeping the panels level no matter how unlevel the roof might be.
And then if we need to add two sections of rails together, there is a splice we can throw in here
in the middle as long as we leave a little bit of space for an expansion. Because in
the summer things get really hot and expand and if they're too...if there is no gap and
they're too close together it might buckle up in the middle so we leave them separate
for shrinkage and expansion. You also might notice that we're leaving a couple of the rails
long here on the side. We'll just cut them off later once we have the panels set and in place.
The copper wire between the rails grounds all the solar panels together.
Now here's where things start to get a little more technical,
and what makes this setup different than the previous systems that I've installed.
This is an in-phase micro inverter, and each solar panel needs one of these underneath it.
It's what allows the panels to become our sunlight backup. I'll explain more when we get down to the
brains of the system that we're going to mount in the garage. These micro inverters
are able to take the DC electricity from each of the panels and turn it into AC electricity
that our houses are able to use - the same AC electricity that flows through the grid.
So we have the micro inverters connected by a trunk cable. These are what connect to the panel,
converts to AC, and then the trunk table is what brings the AC all the way down to the hole
we made in the roof right here. Once the trunk cable has reached the roof junction box we can
switch to romex wire to traverse inside the attic and then bring it outside to run down conduit to
our brains or control unit of the enphase system. And if you didn't understand any of those words,
everything you need will come in the kit to accomplish the job including the plan set,
which is like the instructions. It's a lot simpler after you've seen it done once or twice.
The sun's going down and it's getting super cold, so we will finish mounting the panels
tomorrow. But for you guys...tomorrow is still today. Or maybe today is today. Either way,
it's panel time. Each of these things are pretty massive and weigh about 45 pounds,
which means that it's kind of difficult to get them up here on the roof. If we were smart we
would have gotten a lift or something. But it's not impossible. Once they are on the roof and
all situated and laid out so they don't slide off the edge, we can plug them into the micro
inverters. Remember, the micro inverters are what change the power from DC to AC.
There are 220 volts running down to the brains which I'll show you in a second...after we're
done wiring up the 15 panels. It's kind of hard to mess this up. There are two cables on the back
and they only go in one place. They will audibly click into place and we set the panel on top of
the rail and each of the panels is held in place with 4 mid clamps. It should go pretty quick.
There we have it. All the panels are laid out and installed.
Now we'll drop wires through the roof, into the attic, out the eave, and down the side of
the building to connect to the brains of this system, which gives us our sunlight back up.
Another easy way of going green of course,
is with my neon green JerryRigEverything knife. Link is down in the description.
And with that, the brains of the Enphase system are now unboxed.
The brains of the Enphase system is about 100 pounds. So we are taking the mounting plate,
putting it on a stud with some drywall anchors on the other side so it doesn't go anywhere.
We mounted the brains a little bit higher up so in the future we can possibly add some
batteries here underneath. And I'll explain more in depth what all this hardware does
after we get everything mounted. So you might have noticed we used two different
kinds of wire. We're running the romex through the attic, and then we're running this THHN wire
through some conduit going down to the junction box. The jacketed romex wire is for interiors,
and this other THHN wire is more for exteriors and weather rated. Which is why we use the junction
box at the eave to splice them together. Different wires for different things.
So up until now people with solar panels, if the power ever went out, the solar panels would
turn off and stop functioning. That's because when solar is generated, and there's excess electricity
that the house isn't using, it flows out to the grid to be used by neighbors or somewhere else
down the line. So if the power goes out and someone needs to go work on the power lines,
that excess electricity would be very dangerous. So having the solar panels turn off when the grid
is down makes a lot of sense. A lineman's job is already dangerous enough without having to
worry about a bunch of individual power grids on people's houses...At least that was the case up
until now. This video isn't sponsored by Enphase, but they are the ones with the hardware to allow
us to do something called a sunlight backup. Effectively being off-grid in the middle of
the city while keeping the power lines safe, and I'm going to explain how it all works.
The breaker box in this townhome is located in the basement and this is where the real
fun begins. This is where the grid power comes into the house, as well as the breakers that we
need to separate from this main panel into a separate backuppable panel of its own.
The reason we're picking a few breakers to back up instead of
all of them is because of our lack of roof space up on top of the building.
If we had more roof space on top of the building we could just back up the entire townhome.
But since we're a little bit restricted, we're picking and choosing the most important breakers
so that if the grid power ever does go out, our fridges still stay on, our outlets still stay on,
but we're still not going to use more power than the solar panels are generating.
Remember this is a 5.5 kilowatt system and power has to come from somewhere.
The sun is going down yet again, so let me walk you through this entire system so you
can see how the sunlight backup works. It should only take a few minutes. So up there
on the roof we obviously have the solar panels. Then we have a junction box underneath the eave,
and my HOA requires white conduit that comes down to this junction box right here. This
is a solar panel disconnect. We can flip it and the solar panels turn off. And because we
have the sunlight backup and the ability to do batteries later, we have a redundant switch as
well which turns off the system. And over here is where the meters are that bring power into
the house from the grid. If we walk over here, this is where the brains of the operation are.
And this is where it gets a little more complicated. Stick with me.
The main breaker panel for this house is in the basement. And since the power for this house
is primarily coming from the grid, you know, the vast majority of the time, let's start down there.
This right here is the main breaker panel. This is where the main power comes in from the grid,
flows through the breakers and out to whatever outlets or appliances we might have at the other
end. Because of our limited roof space though, we only have 5.5 kilowatts worth of sunlight backup
to work with. So in this particular house we had to pick and choose which particular breakers
we wanted to back up. We're only utilizing about 25% of the Enphase system we installed. I'll talk
more about electrical flow in a second, but the breakers or loads that we chose to back up are in
this secondary panel here. Important things like the fridge, the master bedroom lights, the kitchen
outlets, stuff that we would still be able to live and function in the house if the grid power
was down. Having electricity is kind of important for things in your fridge...or grandma's oxygen.
Now back to the flow of electricity. We have the grid power here until we come down to this breaker
here which goes out to the Enphase system we just installed. I'll show you that in a second. But
this comes back from that Enphase system with grid power or solar power. It goes through the
breakers and down here to this smart switch which has the ability to shed loads. Which means as the
sun comes up in the morning, the solar power gradually increases, and as the sun goes down,
the power gradually decreases. This box is a smart switch which allows the loads to be
turned on and off based on their importance and can all be programmed into the Enphase system.
Now back to the fun stuff. This is the brains of the Enphase system. With this there are two things
we need to know. This is where the solar is coming in. And then these two white wires are coming from
that breaker panel in the basement. They are the grid power. If the grid were ever to go down or
shut off, these little guys right here can sense the electrical power flowing through the wires,
through a magnetic field. So if the power goes off, we are instantly able to draw from
the solar panels and send it back down to that secondary panel we created through these two
wires right here running through the conduit. Unlike a normal system, if the grid goes out
your solar panels stop working. This system would allow the solar to flow through that conduit down
into our essential lows panel where they would stay on, and this particular townhome would
stay functioning. The Enphase brain also keeps the solar power from flowing out to the grid,
keeping the grid safe for any lineman who would be working on power lines.
You might be asking how much a sunlight backup system like this one might cost. And remember the
technology is pretty new. It's only been around for a couple years so it's still at a premium.
Early adopters always pay more. Currently this adds about $6-7000 to the price of a solar setup.
It might not be right for everyone.
Remember, we're only using about a quarter of this system's capabilities so it would make quite a bit
more sense on a larger system with more panels. But like always, it just depends on your needs and
what you're going to use it for. And obviously, this whole setup does have the potential to be
installed by yourself and personally I'm pretty okay installing solar panels and running that
kind of power, but anything that involves moving breakers or connecting to the grid, personally
that's where I choose a certified electrician. But like always, I'll leave links down in the
description so you can price things out for yourself. And like any traditional solar setup,
any excess electricity we're producing with the panels does flow out to the grid where here in
Utah we get a credit so we can use our energy that we produced back at night again without paying
for it. I think Rocky Mountain Power takes like 10% off the top, but that's fair because they're
acting as our storage. This Enphase system does have a battery hookup so it would be extremely
easy for me to add batteries in the future. It's the same smart switch that works for both the
sunlight backup as well as the battery backup. But we'll save the battery backup for another video.
If you have any questions go ahead and leave them down in
the comments and I'll try to answer them. Feel free to come hang out with
me on Instagram....and thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.