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Comment by mothballed | Hacker News Reader

Solar bribery is interestingly the exact opposite in some of the USA, where the solar contractors have basically gotten in bed with government for regulatory capture on the market.

Most places in my state you need an electrician license, permits, bonding, insurance, a special 'solar' warranty, and inspections if you want solar.

I built my house without any inspection or licensing and connected to the electric grid without anyone from the government ever even looking at it or taking money for it. If I wanted to add a solar system, it basically completely fucked everything and I would have had to gone through the normal permitting and inspection system for my house which would have made even building the house basically impossible for me.

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> I built my house without any inspection or licensing and connected to the electric grid without anyone from the government ever even looking at it or taking money for it.

That's... not common (perhaps more-so in rural areas).

In my area, being connected to the grid brings a lot more hassle: the utility gets a say in how much solar you can build, as well as how it's connected. Some of it makes sense (they want to make sure you're not going to backfeed during an outage and cause a hazard to linemen), but a lot of it is them protecting their bottom line.

Interesting. My utility let me do my own service entrance and everything. They didn't even give a shit what I connected it to. I ended up powering a whole house and a trailer without anyone from the power company even looking at either of them (I added them after I built a 200 amp service entrance as just a stubbed entrance with no load).

If I added a solar system they would neither care nor have any idea. Only the government cares here.

It's not about them protecting their bottom line. It's about managing the supply-demand balance to within the tight tolerances required to operate the grid stably . You can't just let an unconstrained new amount of generation come online and maintain a stable grid.

Where did you build a house without a permit and get away with it?

I have a permit. And the permit basically says I don't have to get it inspected, show building plans, or do anything but tip my hat to the government.

Unless I add solar.

I feel very optimistic about battery storage for this reason. I would love nothing more than be able to run on battery for a week or so so I can give a middle finger to the utility and just rip out the grid connection. No more solar inverter or power limit permits needed.

You probably still want an inverter to get AC for your household. I’m also still waiting for the house size batteries to come down in price before pulling the trigger apart from a small 200W setup for fun

Wording might have been ambiguous - yes to inverter, no to requesting permission to attach it to the grid (for good reasons, backfeeding power during outages, avoiding overload and fire etc etc.)

In my jurisdiction I could avoid permits and inspections by attaching less than 5 square meters of panels to my house, by staying under 60V, and by staying right of the panel. It would be ridiculous to pay over $3k in permits and inspections for $2k of hardware.

"I built my house without any inspection or licensing and connected to the electric grid"

Where exactly do you live? I'm not saying you're lying, but this smells like a tall tale. You can easily buy solar panels and batteries, and if no government inspectors are coming by anyway, then it doesn't matter.

Maybe what you're saying is, "my power company wouldn't let me use grid-tied solar without it being permitted." ?

Rural AZ

>"my power company wouldn't let me use grid-tied solar without it being permitted." ?

Nah they didn't give a shit what I connected it to. I literally stubbed a 200 amp service entrance on vacant land then just went wild connecting it to whatever I like. I shot the shit with their engineer when they ran secondary off the power pole and that was it, I've never seen them again.

> no government inspectors are coming by anyway, then it doesn't matter.

I don't know for certain but having an unpermitted solar panel visible via satellite would likely trigger a visit.

Great, so it sounds like installing unpermitted solar at your house is about as illegal as jaywalking, and you probably shouldn't worry about it so much.

just never upset the wrong person that knows they have leverage over you keeping your home.

As long as it's not visible by satellite, yes.

What law governs this? I'm familiar with a lot of restrictions on grid-tie systems, but I've never heard of it being this strict for something that could (presumably) be done without a back feed.

I mean, are you saying that someone sticking up a few panels+batteries to run an electric fence, gate, and camera system has to have permits?

This all seems strange.

For example, here is the one that to install certain PV you need permit with roof and building plan, which is impossible on my house because I have none (literally built my roof off the cuff after thumbing IRC).

https://www.azleg.gov/ars/11/00323.htm

Just dropping by to say that I appreciate your approach to life lol

Don't people have guns in AZ, especially rural?

I wouldn't want to go to someone's home to hassle them about their DIY solar installation.

People have guns in all of the US. Sure, AZ ownership might be around double that of CA, but that's just going from 1 in 4 to 1 in 2. The odds are high either way.

> Most places in my state you need an electrician license, permits, bonding, insurance, a special 'solar' warranty, and inspections if you want solar.

Because its dangerous to own solar. If its guns, then its perfectly fine and safe.

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