To be clear, we are not posting this to criticize the permitting municipalities we work with. They do valuable work. The West Coast has recently been hit by storms that did a lot of damage. When everyone in a county tries to pull a permit at the same time, things get hectic, permit offices get overworked, and everything takes longer. That’s what we are dealing with here. All of us should send a gift basket to our local permit offices in gratitude. (Please, say the baskets are from us. We’d like the brownie points.)
Okay, if we are going to whine, who are we going to whine about? Who is the target of our ire? No one. (Storms maybe? We shake our fists at the sky like Lt. Dan from Forrest Gump.) In this case, we are just looking to promote some understanding as we schedule work and make promises about completion times. We are ready to go. We have many trucks and crews with tools, material, and expertise ready to handle any customer’s solar electric, solar pool heating, and solar domestic hot water needs. We do new installs as well as service and warranty work on all brands. Many of those jobs will require we pull a permit, and therein lies the promises kept problem.
Whenever possible we like to under-promise and over-deliver. It just makes us look good and garners good reviews from pleasantly surprised customers. These storms, and their destruction to much of the West Coast of Florida, have many permit offices backed up. Things that took days, now take weeks. Took weeks, now takes months. This is making it difficult to complete jobs in a timely manner, and naturally many customers are expressing some frustration.
So, storms are one issue. Another is batteries. Batteries? Yes, batteries. Batteries, paired with solar, large enough to satisfy your entire home’s electrical needs, are now a thing. They are the new “hotcakes” of the renewable energy industry. The technology has advanced and the prices have come down to a point where it makes sense. Many previous solar only customers are looking to upgrade to batteries. Some because they don’t want to use grid power at all, others because they want emergency backup power without cranking up a loud stinky generator and worrying about refueling it.
The problem is that it is gaining popularity faster than people are getting educated about it. That includes solar contractors and permit inspectors for the municipalities. It is a new thing and there is a learning curve. Our techs have taken the courses and gained their certifications. Most battery manufacturers provide them for free to solar contractors, but not all the permitting offices have this same access. We are having engineering plans rejected by some permitting offices based on bad information on the part of the inspector. This is also causing delays and added expense. In some cases, it is easier to find a work around the inspector will understand than to convince them the original engineering is fine as presented.
We were inspired to write this due to several permitting delays landing in our laps over the last few weeks. We recognize this is a temporary problem. Soon, storm permits will be caught up and these battery permit inspectors will have had time to up their battery game. After that, we can stop apologizing to customers about things we can’t control and get back to under-promising and over-delivering, as usual.
Still, if you are so inclined, send the permitting office a gift basket and say it was from us. Let’s grease the wheels of compliance, municipal gratitude, and good will toward AllSolar Energy.
