It's not just a technicality; the panels I have seen labeled that way have the ground and neutral bars bonded and no simple way to separate them.
Am I getting this right, in California, the home of regulation, you can remove the busbars of a UL listed meter/main and add lugs and your own unfused service conductors out to an ATS then feed back in to the main breaker?
You here in the news about these power outages lasting weeks due to weather, wild fires and what have you. Now your saying if these people spend 30k on a solar system they should make sure they can not in any way use solar panels when the power goes out?
It has nothing to do with making things easy for the solar company. The job of a straight grid tied PV system is to offset your electric bill with locally produced energy - no more, no less. When the grid goes down, it shuts off, by law, by UL standards, and (more to the point), physics. If you want a PV system that will power your entire home sustainably during a long power outage, it can be done but it is going to cost you a whole lot more than $30k - like double that or more.
Fair enough, but I as a consumer would never want such a system.
Not me, I am not an inspector but yeah that would never fly in NY even in the booon docks upstate, as service equipment cant be modified like that. Thats cool you can do that out in CA though.Exactly.
Are you saying that you would consider that a violation?
Lots of people feel otherwise when the run the numbers.
There is a line of solar inverters, SMA Sunny Boy, that will provide you with about 1000-1500 watts of 120vac power when the grid is shut down (and the sun is shining). I wouldn't call that "sustainably during a long power outage" but it's better than nothing. Can cerainly power a frigde, some lights, modem. Or put some juice in your EV, if you have it rigged to be able to put some juice into your panel.
That would be perfect
OK, but understand, 1000 -1500W isn't all that much, and it depends on the DC part of the system generating at least that much power. If you put more demand on the system than it can supply, it will shut down. Yes, you can use it to charge your phone and run a refrigerator for a while during the day, but it is limited emergency power from a single outlet connected directly to the inverter and it won't power any lights at night. Backup power to your home is another thing entirely.
I think that might be a wiring space violation. I could also cite 110.3(B) or at least make a big fuss about whether the lugs are suitable and the crimping done properly. Or whether that shrink-tube and tape is gonna stand the test of time or eventually give way to a huge short. If we did that sort of thing routinely here in the Bay Area we would probably at the least earn enough distrust from some inspectors that they'd look for any other reason to fail us. My point here isn't so much to cry 'code violation' and declare it needs to be ripped out; the particular photo posted here it looks like it's done professionally. But I've seen similar photos where the terminations were compete hack work and probably dangerous. Also subject to Dunning-Kruger issues: some guy has seen it done once and thinks he knows everything and doesn't use the right crimp tool and does bad terminations. One could argue it's a slippery slope; at the very least the details matter and it cannot be done on any given meter/main. And I wouldn't consider PG&E project managers to be qualified to discriminate between those details.
We should really ask ourselves why not. Makes all this solar and backup stuff a lot easier.
The simple answer here is add battery backup and an MID to the solar system. Once you say that, the actual details get more complicated. People would spend 30k on a solar system to save $5000 a year on electric bills. You have to explain to them that backup power is an additional luxury that doesn't pay for itself (same as a generator).
Pardon the stupid question but what is a MID?
