AMY FARNAM: Hi.

My name's Amy Farnam.

And I am a solar design specialist, which means that two or three times a week I come out to homes like this, measure them up, and take readings at these homes for a solar array.

So I can then design it when I'm back in the office.

It's an excellent job.

It allows me a little bit of social time, a little bit of office introvert time.

It's a really nice combination.

I love going out to people's homes and meeting them and seeing where they live and driving around the state.

I get to use math.

I get to use science.

I'm doing something that I feel is good for the Earth.

So for me, this is the perfect job.

And we need more people doing it, to be quite honest.

We're always hiring.

The solar industry's always looking for more good people.

So this is my job.

And today I'm going to show you how we do it.

[music playing] What we're going to do here is a lot of measuring.

Basically we're going to measure both of these roofs on the house behind me.

We have one that's more of a shallow pitch and one that's a steeper pitch.

And that can mean different solar potential.

So we're going to measure both of them to see how many panels can fit on these roofs.

And we're going to take readings so we can get an idea of how much sun hits each roof during the course of a year.

The tools you need for this job-- phone, of course, photos, compass, calculator, tape measure, got a little hack for it.

We want this to go up the roof, put it on a little PVC piece, pop it in, and it travels up the roof.

Once we are on the roof, we use this tool.

So this is the one that takes a picture of the sky to the south, shows us the path of the sun based on where we are, and overlays it on the photo so that we know if we take a reading in a certain spot, OK, that spot gets 75% sun all year long, so it can make this much solar energy.

So this is invaluable to us.

Other than that, we have a pole that the SunEye can go on.

And in case we can't get up to a certain spot, this extends about three times its size.

And a ladder.

So we don't have to get on every roof.

Some people that have a fear of heights feel like this isn't the job for them.

But we have people who do this job by just putting the ladder up.

And getting to the drip edge of the roof, you can do everything.

So you don't need to get on a roof.

It is not a prerequisite for this job.

But the ladder is important to get up, even to the edge of the roof so that you can get your measurements.

So we don't need PPE, Personal Protection Equipment, for this job because technically, officially, I am inspecting the roof.

So because of that, I don't need to tie on.

I don't need to bolt something down into the roof and then have a safety harness on.

Because I'm inspecting the roof, I am legitimately able to go up there without PPE.

[dog barks] Probably not.

[laughs] I'll let the dog be.

So maybe what I'll do is put an A frame right here.

This ladder has a lot of options.

It's called a little giant.

So what I'm doing now is keeping it in it's A-frame position but just extending it.

But if I wanted to push these in again, this hinge, I could make it come all the way flat.

So it's got multiple options between the extenders and the hinge part.

So the A frame is obviously the safest way to use this ladder.

But it won't always cut it for certain heights.

So at that point, we straighten it.

And I can extend as long as I need to get it up.

Whenever you're on a deck, you want to make sure that you're using it in the A-frame position because decks by nature, especially when they're wet, can be pretty slippery.

So if I put this up at an angle and this deck was wet, it could kick right out.

So when I'm climbing up the ladder, I'm making sure I have three points of contact on the ladder at all times.

So my feet are obviously on there, my two hands, but you're going wrong over rung.

So you have at least three points of contact on this ladder.

So this tool is the Solmetric SunEye.

And what it's going to do is take a picture of the sky to the south.

And based on our location that I put in here, it's going to use GPS to overlay the path of the sun onto this picture.

So I'm going to take a reading from here and here and here, and I'm going to get an idea of the path of the sun and how much of it is sun and how much of it is shade on this roof.

So I'll show you when I'm done.

But first I have to put in the orientation of the roof and then the pitch also.

So I'm going to put in first the homeowner and then the state-- we're in New Hampshire-- the town.

So now it knows where we are.

So I'm going to go over to the other side of the roof to get the orientation and the pitch.

I can use my compass, but there's also a compass in here.

So I can say, measure my orientation or azimuth.

That's another word for it.

And we are at 186, so almost due south.

And then we're going to take the pitch of the roof.

So this has a tilt measure on it.

The tilt is 23 degrees.

Let's take a reading from-- I'm going to pick this side first.

We snap the picture.

The grid that you see on there is the sun's path.

And right now it's yellow.

So it starts at 6:00 AM here, noon in the middle, 6:00 PM over here.

And it's actually upside down.

So June's arc is on the bottom, December on the top.

So you can see we got a little shade in the afternoon during the winter months, shade here all year long in the late afternoon.

But these numbers help us understand this.

So TOF on the bottom there, it's just the tilt and orientation.

So if this were in a wide open field, this roof would be 97%.

It would see sun 97% of the time.

The upper number is TSRF.

So that's telling us with the shade, this roof has sun 85% of the time.

So basically it's a great roof.

Really we like to see above 70.

85 is great.

So I'm going to take another shot down here.

The lower you go, the less sun you have, the more shade obviously.

The lower you are, the closer the trees are.

So if you can only get a reading along the drip edge sometimes, you know that the sun's going to be a little bit better higher up the roof.

So that was 84 down there, 85 up here, so a great roof.

I'm going to I measure the roof.

So we want to know how many panels can fit on this roof.

192 inches.

There are some new rules in place about panels and where they can be for firefighter safety.

So we need to keep 18 inches from the ridge down free of solar panels.

In case this house was on fire and the firefighters need to come, They want to bring their ladder, and they want to hook it over the edge.

So we take 192 minus 18.

We have 174 left for panels.

So our panels-- most panels are about 3 and 1/2 feet wide by 5 and 1/2 high.

So I know just from doing this that if I take 174 inches and I divide that by the height of a solar panel, which is 67 inches about, that I can get two rows in the portrait orientation.

So solar panels can go portrait or landscape.

So we can do two rows in portrait and one in landscape.

So we know that that's about 170 inches to do that.

So now we're taking the width of the roof.

Again, careful on the rake, which is the edge here.

So 230 that way, 230 inches.

And I always work in inches because that's what I have memorized the panel measurements to be.

And so that's how my mind works for the math.

But obviously people do it differently.

So I make a note, 230 inches.

And the panels are 40 inches wide.

So we know that we can fit five panels across in portrait orientation.

So right away just because I've been doing this a while, I know that I can have 10 here in portrait and then 3 in landscape.

So we can fit 13 panels on this roof.

And based on the readings that I got of about 85%, 83%, I know that those panels will make around their nameplate rating.

So what that means is you have a panel that's 330 watts, for instance.

I know that seeing sun for about 84% of the year, they're going to make 330 watt hours, or 300 kilowatt hours a year.

So that's something we can do the math.

We're going to use 325-watt panels.

If we put 13 of them here, we have 4,225 watts on this roof.

And I know because of the amount of sun that this roof receives that they will make-- they'll generate about that many kilowatt hours.

So that's a way to tell the homeowner, this roof itself will make about 4,200 kilowatt hours.

This customer, in particular, uses about 7,000 kilowatt hours.

So it's making more than half.

It's making somewhere around 60% of their use for them.

So if we divide it, actually I'll give you the exact number.

It's making 60%.

If this is the only proof they have, we could say that the homeowner is covering 60% of your bill worth it.

And that at some point, I'm giving them the cost to do this.

And so that's how we also figure out the rest of the economics, like the payback of this system and what their bills would look like going forward.

Saying, OK, if we paid for this all up front, I only have 40% left to pay to the utility company.

And part of what goes into that is saying, OK, the utility rate right now is $0.18 per kilowatt hour.

But next year it's going to go up to $0.19 and then maybe next year after that $0.20.

So that's all factored into the economics of this system, is that's going to be part of the payback right there.

The pictures are-- yeah, I want to pretty much come home with all of this and build a virtual roof and solar array system for our installers to see and for our engineers.

So they're not coming on site.

If I'm the only one here, I need to make sure I'm giving them a very accurate picture of everything that's going on here, so including the roof, the grounds around it, how high is the roof, where is the electric panel, where is the meter, where are we going to tie in.

So the electricity part of this is obviously a big variable that we need to figure out.

Are we going to run wires all the way across the house and down the other side?

Are we just going to punch right in under us?

The panels are generating DC electricity when the sun is hitting them.

The house runs on AC electricity.

So from here, the electricity gets transported in a metal conduit about 3/4 inch, comes down somewhere around the side of the roof to an inverter, so a box that will invert DC to AC.

From there, that electricity goes either into the home, so right into the main electric panel, or if there's excess being made, it'll I'll go back out through the meter.

So it's something called net metering, which means any of the excess electricity that's being made will get sent out through the meter.

This homeowners meter will essentially spin backwards as the kilowatt hours travel back into the grid.

And from there, the utility captures that through the meter, and they credit the homeowner for every kilowatt hour that goes out.

The utilities keep about 20% of every kilowatt hour that goes through that meter.

And that's the net metering rate in New Hampshire.

So it's different in different states.

But that's their take for keeping the wires running into your home, for you using them as a battery essentially.

So you're building up credits, especially in the summer when we have these long summer days, sun all day long right overhead.

You're typically generating more than you need at that point.

So those are getting built up on your bill.

And then at night you're pulling those credits down, on cloudy days, on snowy days.

These panels will be covered with snow sometimes.

So you won't have that solar.

That's when you use those credits.

So we know that you're going to lose that 20%.

So we factor that into the whole annual picture of what a solar array can generate.

So when I say, yeah, we're going to make 4,200 kilowatt hours on this roof.

We also will put that into a spreadsheet that says, OK, these folks work out of an office every day.

So no one's home.

So all day when this roof is collecting solar electricity, pretty much none of it is going to the house, just a little bit for the fridge and the chargers and the TVs and whatnot.

But pretty much all of it is going back out through the meter.

And so you're net metering more of it, and you're losing 20% of more of it.

So we can change though the percentage of how much is net metered based on what we know about the homeowners.

So there's a lot of math involved.

So this roof is a little too steep for my comfort zone.

So I'm going to put the ladder up along the edge so that I can measure it and take some readings and get an idea of the age of the roof as well.

I like to be up close and see each roof and make sure it's not cracking and peeling.

And then you've got to tell the homeowner they need a new roof, which is kind of a bummer to hear.

So yeah, I'm footing the ladder here so that when I start walking it up it doesn't kick up, hopefully not damaging the plant life too much.

And I just pick up the bottom, walk it out.

When my feet are touching the feet of the ladder, I need to be able to reach out with straight arms and get it.

So it's a 3-to-1 ratio, I believe.

But that's an easier way to know, is you put your feet on the feet of the ladder.

And if you can reach out and grab it with straight arms, that's a good safe angle.

And you can see that my ladder above the drip edge is three feet.

And so that's what OSHA calls for.

So I'm checking out this roof as well for a couple of reasons.

One is because the other roof we were on didn't quite make 100% of the homeowner's electricity.

Typically, people want to get to at least 100%, if not a little bit more.

So let's say a homeowner is planning to get an electric vehicle or a hot tub or something like that, we want to make sure that they have enough solar electricity in the future to cover all their needs.

So that's something we find out as well.

But this roof is also a great roof.

It's a little further from the trees that were in our readings from that roof.

So this may be even a little better.

The pitch is steeper as well, and that's good because it will get more sun because of where we are on the planet.

The saying goes that you want to match the pitch to your latitude.

So that's essentially true.

I would say anything where we live, anything around 30 to 45 degrees is good.

We're at 44th latitude.

So this being a steeper pitch is going to get better sun.

The other reason that I think it's going to be better is because we run all these jobs through a professional engineer to do a structural analysis.

So we want to make sure that this roof is structurally sound enough for the extra weight of the panels.

The panels add about four pounds per square foot.

And I'd say maybe 25% of the time we find that roofs with a shallow pitch need a little bit more structural integrity behind them, which means sistering rafters or building a new wall.

So if we can find a roof with steeper pitch it's probably a better idea.

So we're going to measure this roof.

I've got my little PVC here, my little hack.

So it's just a section of PVC pipe with a slit cut through it.

And my tape just kind of slides right on.

So this way I can send it up the roof and just kind of bounce over the shingle courses without it getting caught.

So as I'm going up, I think, OK, there's the chimney.

I want to keep that in mind.

So the chimney's at 156.

And I can get right down to that ridge cap.

212-- I'm going to add a couple inches for that ridge cap there.

So we're going to say 214 for this roof.

I'm going to take a reading.

I want to make sure I change the pitch here.

The orientation, or the azimuth of the roof is the same.

But the other one was 23 degrees.

This one is 38.

So that TOF that we had earlier, tilt and orientation, was, I believe, 95% on that roof, on the first roof.

On this one, it's 99%.

So this roof is 99% perfect, with shade 86%.

And so again, we're at the lower part of the roof.

As we get higher, it's going to get better.

So what I'm going to do to get higher on this roof is put this tool on a pole.

So when this is in extension mode, and I switch it on here, I can communicate to it.

And by that I mean I'm going to put it up on the edge of the roof, and I'm going to spin it 360 within a couple of seconds.

I think it is.

And when I've done that successfully, the beeping goes to a quicker beep.

And then one long one means it's taking the picture.

So that's how I know it's working like a selfie stick up there.

There's like a lot of hummingbird action back here, which is cool.

[beeping grows quicker] So on this side of the roof, we are getting 88%, actually a little bit better, because I can see it's showing some green where it should show yellow.

So it's going to be more like 90% right here.

And what's nice to see is this is the meter.

Typically when you see the meter here, it means that the main electric panel is right underneath this.

So we know that if we come down with our metal conduit and punch in right here, we can do our inverter on the wall of the basement right next to the main panel.

So that inverter we talked about ties in between the main panel and this meter.

So that's a really easy installation.

It's less than 10 feet down probably, 10 the whole way, and then punch in and it's right there.

So I want to figure out how many panels are going to fit on this roof because the house roof behind me is a much better option based on how much sun it gets.

So we're going to measure it up and see what we can fit.

230 plus 175-- quick do the math in your head.

I can't.

So I'm going to bust out my calculator.

230 plus 175 is 405.

So we know the panels are 40 inches wide.

405 means 10 panels across.

So what I'm considering, however, is the spot between that shallower pitched roof and this roof, that shallower pitched roof, because it's a little higher, is going to put some shade on this roof.

So I would actually prefer to keep the array this way, to the east end, so that we can avoid the shade that will inevitably hit that section of roof on the west.

So instead of 10 panels, I'll probably say 9.

So the customer has aesthetic concerns, as a lot of people do, especially when it's on the front of the house.

You want to pull in your driveway and enjoy the look of your home.

What's interesting about this roof is that the chimney is not centered.

So already there's some challenges about making sure that this is going to be nice and symmetrical because of the chimney.

But we're going to try it.

We're going to see what a rendering would look like.

And we want to show the homeowner, here's a couple of different options.

Do you want to match sort of the offset of the chimney, or do you want it to look symmetrical?

And so this customer uses about 7,000 kilowatt hours per year.

So that's what we need to cover.

Now I want to figure out how many panels will fit on the house roof.

If we can cover all the homeowners' electricity on one roof, that's going to be a much better option.

It cuts down on the labor because we don't have to set up twice, tie in twice.

We don't have to figure out how conduit goes from one solar array to the other and how that looks.

So We're going to see if we can do everything on one roof.

From our measurements, we learned that the roof was 405 inches wide.

And as I mentioned, I want to kind of stay clear from that the west end of that roof because of the higher roof that's going to shade it a little.

So we're going to try to lean towards the east side.

So 405 inches-- the panel itself is 40 inches wide in portrait orientation, 67 inches wide when it's in landscape.

So we have 405 divided by 40 is 10.

Because I want to keep clear the west section, I'm going to do nine panels.

So nine across in portrait.

We know we can fit two rows of those.

So the roof itself was 214 inches.

We're going to take off the 18 for the firefighters ordinance.

So we are left with 196.

And from there, we know we can do, let's see, 196 divided by 67 inches, so not quite 3 rows.

But we can do two rows and portrait and then a row in landscape.

So we'll have 9 in portrait, 9 in portrait, and 405 divided by 67 is 6, so 6 in landscape.

So that gives us a total of 24 panels.

The panels we're using right now are 325 watt.

So 325 times 24, that's a 7.8 kilowatt system.

And we know because of the amount of sun that this roof got, that we're going to make more kilowatt hours than the nameplate rating here.

So we're actually going to make more like 8,000 to 8,200 kilowatt hours.

And I'm just going to say 8,000 to be conservative.

And this customer wants a little bit more because they plan on getting an electric vehicle.

So we know that this roof will work for them.

I can estimate the cost of this system.

And so what we use for that is something called cost per watt.

In the '70s, it was $10 a watt, $15 a watt.

15 years ago, it was maybe $8 a watt.

Right now it's about $3 per watt.

So that's a way we can say, here's how much your system's going to cost.

I like to be conservative.

So I'm going to go with $3.50 a watt to be able to tell them a price that I'll probably come in lower at when I get home and actually send them something.

So at $3.50 a watt, this solar job is going to cost them around $27,000.

So that's what I'm going to tell the homeowner today.

I'll also mention financing because that's a really popular option.

A lot of our customers don't have $27,000.

But they can finance this.

They can do it through their own bank.

They can do it through one of ours.

But you can essentially trade in your utility bill payment for a loan payment.

And that's the way that it works for a lot of people.

So instead of paying the utility bill that goes up 3% a year, you can now pay a fixed-rate loan for 7 years, 10 years, 15, 20, whatever sort of works with your budget.

Basically make solar more accessible to people that don't have big savings accounts.

These panels de-rate a little bit each year.

They're warrantied to produce up to 85% for 25 years.

So we know that they will de-rate less than 1% of year.

But even 40 years out, these panels can still work.

The technology's very simple.

It just means they'll be making a little bit less.

And hopefully at that point in time, things are becoming more efficient anyway.

We won't need as much electricity as we do now.

We're constantly seeing more efficient heating, cooling, hot water, cars.

So everything is sort of going-- and lighting.

Everything's going to that more efficient form.

So this homeowner, if they want to sell the house in 20 years, that's resale value for them.

That's basically they can say, hey, this house, on top of being amazing, has free electricity.

So what is that worth to a new homeowner?

I would say that's worth quite a bit.

You have no electric bill in this house.

And you didn't have to pay for the solar to go on top.

It's already there.

So that's a nice added bonus for people that are thinking, oh, I'm not going to be in this house for very long.

The resale value is also there with solar.

So I am going to do a rendering for the solar array on this roof so that we can show the customer a few different options.

I'm using an image manipulation program to do this.

So I have the photo of the house.

And I have pre-loaded in here some modules, solar panels.

So I can easily go in and pull up different variations.

All these are panels in here.

I don't typically do this on site.

So I usually take some time to do it, make it all line up really nice, get the shadows nice.

But this at least gives you an idea of what a rendering can look like.

So this is what we could show the customer as one of the options.

So as you can see, this one lines up with the chimney nicely.

We do have a little more space to work with.

So once I get back to the office, I'm going to sort of play with it and see what our other options are.

So I was able to show the rendering to the homeowner.

And we knew they had some aesthetic concerns about the look of the solar array.

And they actually would prefer three rows in portrait instead of the variation of portrait and landscape.

So they asked me if we could do three rows in portrait, and we are really close to being able to do that measurement wise.

So I actually called back to my office and spoke to someone in engineering.

And I gave them the scenario and explained how much I assume a ridge cap is.

And they said, well, we actually officially assume a ridge cap is six inches.

And I assumed it was two.

So what we can do is add four more inches.

And that allows us just the right amount to do three rows in portrait.

So that's what we're going to do.

We're going to do nine, nine, and six, all in portrait.

At this point, we've done everything we need to do to get a real picture of what's going to go on this roof.

We have done the measurements.

We have done the solar readings.

And we've done a rendering.

We've spoken with the homeowner.

And we've even talked to our engineering to understand how we can fit three rows in portrait.

So at this point, what I'm going to do is go back to the office.

We have people who are going to apply for interconnection to the utility.

So we have to say to the utility, we want to interconnect this solar array with your grid.

Is that OK?

The next thing we're going to do is have someone do a professional engineer stamp.

So we want to make sure this roof is structurally sound enough.

We want to apply to the town for permitting.

And we're going to have an engineer do a one line, which is basically the electricity drawing for how this is going to connect together and how it's going to work into the grid.

So once all of that is complete, we have our solar array.

And the next step is installation.

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