Comment by breakds | Hacker News Reader

Comment by breakds | Hacker News Reader

Wow, what a fantastic write-up—thanks for sharing this! I’m a San Jose homeowner (and PG&E sufferer) with a homelab that pulls over 1 kW, and I’ve been down the DIY solar rabbit hole for the past two weeks. Based on my research, I’m planning a roughly 9 kW Signature Solar setup:

20× 455 W Canadian Solar panels (~$173 ea)

1× GridBoss MID V2 (~$2 400)

1× FlexBoss 21 (~$2 400)

4× Eco-Worthy 48 V 100 Ah LiFePO₄ batteries (~$1 500 ea)

18 U server rack (~$500) — total hardware ~$14 760

My big hang-up has been the rooftop work, permitting and inspections—almost no one I call will touch a true DIY system. If anyone here in the Bay Area has recommendations for installers or back-of-house permit-whisperers who’ll partner on a non-Tesla/Sunrun job, I’d love to hear how you made it happen. Thanks again for the inspiring guide!

Greenlancer will draw up code-compliant plans that you can submit to your local building permit agency, and they'll revise if anything needs it. It cost less than $400 last year. You've done enough research that they'll be able to easily take your project and turn it into something legal.

I recently did an Enphase system of a similar size to yours. It was fully DIY except for wiring the combiner and a roofing company to plug all the holes I drilled. Working with PG&E was truly an epic year-plus battle culminating in a CPUC complaint, but in the end it was really just a bunch of emails.

I don't have any installer recommendations, but it should be easy enough to find a local electrician, and I've found that they tend to know others in adjacent fields.

Thanks so much for sharing your story – hearing about your DIY Enphase install (and epic PG&E battle!) really gives me confidence. And the information you shared is extremely helpful for first-time DIYers like me.

Crazy, where I live the payback on the hardware would take ~114,000 kWh (or 13) years at 24kWh per day, $0.13/kWh).

Where you live it’s only 24,000 kWh to pay off the hardware, or just under 3 years ($0.61/kWh). I’d definitely pull the trigger.

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