Ohhhh yeahhhh

“The sun … even more beautiful” – Yello

Going solar has been a goal of mine for many years. As a kid I was enamored with a solar kit from Radio Shack that had a solar panel about the size of a playing card and could turn a tiny motor with a fan blade on it. Not much later in life when I was really into advanced Lego and K’NEX kits I got my hands on the K’NEX solar kit and built their star Ferris Wheel from the instruction booklet. The finished model was around three feet tall and had a small solar panel about 4×8 inches (if memory serves, this was over 20 years ago) that plugged directly into a motor that ran the Ferris Wheel. This became a fixture in my living room for a few years. Some people had elaborate clocks for their animated house décor, others had a stereo or TV running on low, I had a sun-powered real-world screensaver. 😛

Like most people I saw plenty of solar installations over the years when growing up, but the key difference between then and now (or pre- and post-2000 to be more specific) is that it’s only been in the recent decade or so that solar has actually become available, feasible, practical, and in some cases even profitable, for residents. Solar for the home is expensive, there’s no way to sugarcoat that. Even a single panel will set you back a few Benjamins, and a few more for either battery storage and/or grid hookup. Scale that up to the point where the solar array is large enough to completely offset the total electricity consumption of a home over the course of a whole year, yeah that’s loan territory. But that’s actually a good thing, because solar loans are mainstream now. You still have to go through the same credit checks and what have you like any other loan, but now the solar installers usually streamline the process so you get your loan, installation, new roof (if applicable and available as a service), and federal tax credit all through the same place so you’re not playing tag team with a hundred people. As an engineer who makes it his mission in life to make things easier, this very much appealed to me.

This brings me to today … ish. I reached out to a local solar installer back in April, but I knew in advance that I was going to have some issues. My family and I are heavy tech users, and I have a homelab with several servers running 24/7. I estimated I would need at least twice as many panels as the average household to account for my electrical usage and this was confirmed by my installer. The good news: my roof faces almost perfectly due south and there are no trees or other obstacles to create any shade whatsoever, making for prime solar generation conditions. The bad news; my roof has a bunch of gables which significantly reduces the number of panels I can mount. I was told I would need forty two panels at 400W peak output to reach zero usage (also sometimes called net zero, where you generate as much or more than the electricity you consume, but you’re connected to the grid), and it was estimated that I could fit around thirty panels on the back of my house, with the remaining twelve on the west side. It would work, but it wasn’t ideal, at least not to me. But that was just the proposal from the solar installer. I had another idea in mind.

Enter YouTube. Back in 2019 I came across a video of someone that had built a small pergola next to his pool in Florida and decided to put solar panels on it. I think there were only maybe six panels and I can’t remember what that power output was, but like in my case, he had no nearby trees or structures to create shade, so it was a nice little addition to his backyard landscape to get some free power out of it. This got the gears turning.

I also have a pool with a concrete pool deck and the area is in need of an aesthetic upgrade. An old metal framed picnic table by itself just doesn’t do anything for me. So I designed a pergola that was pleasing to the eye, created a shaded area next to the pool, and with the addition of an outdoor kitchen, offered some potential evening/nightlife for outdoors. The trick in my case was sizing the pergola to fit into the existing landscape (my pool is oriented about 30 degrees relative to my house) but be large enough to fit a decent number of panels on top. Cue the main theme to Ocean’s Eleven, because below is the plan:

This structure measures 17.5×17.5 feet at ground level and 21.5×21.5 feet on top of the roof beams. Using the dimensions of the solar panels from the datasheet given to me by my installer’s solar engineer, I was able to create a roof that would hold twenty four panels, just over half what I would need to reach zero usage.

At this point two things came to mind. 1: Installing only twenty four panels on the roof would leave some bare spots, and 2: What about future power needs? The first point is most DEFINITELY #FirstWorldProblems, so yeah I’ll grant you that. But accounting for future power needs is a legitimate point. When I asked if I could go higher than the original forty two panel quote so I could account for future increased usage (e.g. charging an EV) they said “sure, your limit is 20kW peak output or fifty 400W panels so it’s not a problem”. So between the pergola and my roof forty eight is now the magic number.

Rather than make this a super lengthy post I’m going to try to do daily updates of the construction once that’s underway and expand on relevant details of the plans as they get built. I meant to make this post several months ago, but due to numerous construction delays it’s finally going to start in about a week, just a mere three and a half months behind schedule (/sarcasm). Until next time.

Actually now that I think about it, I haven’t watched Ferris Bueller’s Day Off in a long time…