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lar, a small installer based in
San Diego, took the job with
gusto. Junaid Qazi, the proj-
ect’s lead installer, says this
was one of the most challeng-
ing installations on which he
has ever worked.
The sales team at Clary
eventually came back with a
system design that satisfied all
of Elkus’ demands. It consist-
ed of seven groups of modules
on different areas of the roof,
all pointing in slightly differ-
ent directions – some slightly
to the east, and others to the
west. The system uses micro-
inverters, so string size is ir-
relevant, and the panels can face in as
many different directions as desired. The
3D model Clary sent Elkus used a Google
Maps image of his rooftop to simulate the
system and what it would look like from
the street. The house looked no different
than before, and won Patty’s approval. Or
as Elkus puts it, »it passed the test.«
Before Elkus made his decision, Clary
sent him four proposals describing en-
ergy savings. They laid out payback sce-
narios for a 70-panel system with and
without the chiller, and with or without
SDG&E’s new option for smart-meter-
ing, which would allow varying rates
depending on the utility company’s
peak hours. The most appealing solu-
tion involved a smart meter. According
to Clary’s estimate, Elkus’ internal rate
of return over 25 years would be 34.5%.
At that rate, the system would be paid
off in 6.3 years.
Once Elkus had chosen his system,
Clary knew the roofing side of the proj-
ect would be tricky, but he figured the
electrical engineering aspects would be
routine. The next few steps should have
been simple: an city inspector would re-
view the plan, they would spend a week
or two building, and then the city and
the utility would conduct final inspec-
tions. They submitted their plans in
mid-January. Inspections in Poway tend
to take just a couple of weeks, usually, so
Clary proceeded to order materials.
Bureaucratic mayhem
The city’s initial response to the ap-
plication arrived shortly. The inspector
said the project plan was not in compli-
ance with UL requirements, since Clary
was using Sanyo modules with Enphase
microinverters. The note read: »modules
require fuse protection for listing verifica-
tion by NRTL... Where is this fuse protec-
tion provided?« Junaid Qazi, an installer
at Clary who was working with Enphase
microinverters for the first time, contacted
the Enphase for clarification.
The city of Poway, as it turned out, was
using a subcontractor at EsGil Corpora-
tion, a San Diego-based building safety
consultancy that reviews plans in numer-
ous San Diego County municipalities.
When Enphase heard that a municipal-
ity in the San Diego area might be turn-
ing down proposals for systems with their
technology, they got involved immediate-
ly. »(EsGil) reviews plans for a lot of cities,«
says Jeff Laughy, an applications engineer
at Enphase involved in the debacle. »San
Diego and the surrounding area is too big
of a market to not be allowed to install
your equipment,« says Laughy. Still, the
city wasn’t satisfied with a response from
the manufacturer alone. They needed
something more official.
»That was an ordeal,« says Laughy, who
knows the section of UL code, 690-51,
be heart. Next, Enphase contacted John
Wiles, a code expert at Sandia National
think it was forged.’« The city wanted to
speak with someone in person who could
verify the plan’s compliance with Nation-
al Electric Code.
The inspector was calling into ques-
tion UL testing standards, specifically the
organization’s use of CSA International,
another testing agency, to help review
products for listing, says Qazi. »They
were questioning UL’s way of doing it.«
During the five months that Elkus and
Clary spent negotiating with the City of
Poway and EsGil, says Qazi, the process
repeated itself several times. The first in-
spector »had this set of objections, and we
worked through each one of them, and we
got him the documents he needed,« says
Qazi. The rejection letter cited NEC code
690-51, and called for overcurrent protec-
tion to be added to each module, since En-
phase inverters lack fuses. Retrofitting the
system to meet this code would require the
installer to cut the cable for each module
– 70 of them in all – and inserting a fuse.
»Those looked like reasonable objections at
the beginning,« says Qazi, »but once you
go to the waivers and you look at all the ad-
dendums that UL had issued specifically,
it was really clear that they did not require
it.« As the debate escalated, the conversa-
tion moved into increasingly higher levels
of the bureaucracy.
The SDG&E smart meter: Elkus says the
smart meter which adjusts electricity
rates based on peak and off-peak hours
has helped save money on his bills.
»But every time that a new person
would get involved the whole story would
start again.« Items they have already dis-
November 2009 93
Melissa Bosworth / photon-pictures.com
»
Labs, and Tim Zgonena, Princi-
pal Engineer in Distributed En-
ergy Resources Equipment and
Systems with Underwriter’s
Laboratories, for back up. Both
agencies sent responses to the
city attesting to the safety of
Enphase inverters when used
with Sanyo modules.
»They wouldn’t take that
document as well,« says Qazi.
»In fact they said ‘this docu-
ment would be fine, we just