How the sparkie buggered my solar system
By: Carl Andrews
Tags: Education, Solar Energy, Academy

How the sparkie buggered my solar system

I live in the countryside, and the cost of bringing in power from the nearest pole (65 metres away) was absolutely OVER THE TOP. So I opted for an Off-Grid Solar system. After getting really stuffed, searching all the web sites for the best equipment and prices, I settled on buying some ZN Shine panels and a VICTRON 3000W combo inverter/charge controller, four 100 AH deep-cycle Gel batteries, and a second charge controller ( that is meat for another post). Then I looked up plans for installing a whole system off-grid. I saw that these plans were chock full of parts that I had no idea where to get! At that point I decided, better to hire a sparkie to do the install. That’s when my troubles began .. . .

A sparkie may or may not have experience with installing solar. IF they do, its probably a bad experience, and they will say no, they are too busy, when you call them. If they don’t, they will say they do when you call them, and they will go right ahead and get their first bad experience at your place! At least that was my experience. I actually had a neighbor who is a sparkie, and I KNOW he has installed solar before, because he has solar on his roof, his sister’s roof next door, and his kids’ house back behind him! But when I asked him, and showed him the equipment list and the plans I had drawn up, he decided that he was way too busy to do my system install.

So, I put out a call for a sparkie on an internet site that is for finding service people. Well, this guy contacted me, and he kept contacting me, over and over again, until I finally said yes, I would meet with him. He then came to my house and paraded around with all his fancy tools and special wire he said was designed for solar installs, and showed me this and that, and brought with him his former professor to make sure that he could answer any questions I had. What followed was a nightmare. Rather than make you depressed, telling you the whole story, I will elaborate on the things that I learned about what sparkies DO NOT KNOW (necessarily) about solar, because they were never taught these things in sparkie school.

1) working on a roof. Sparkies often go up to the edge of a roof to install the main service, but they don’t actually go ONTO the roof. Not if they can help it. You would think that its just a matter of having a good ladder. . .

Well, I talked to a colleague who works in this field. He personally knows three people who broke their leg or foot or hand falling off of, or falling through a roof. He also knows several who have broken their wrist trying to wrestle big, awkward solar panels onto a roof. Then there is the problem of roof warrantees. Many roofing companies will void their warranties unless the roof install was done to their specifications.

So they don’t have the right gear for working on a roof. It requires special shoes, a special safety harness, and a tie-off anchor, and other goodies, like a clamp to attach your ladder to the edge of a roof without damaging the gutter when you climb over. NO, don’t expect a sparkie to go on a roof without consequences.

2) Working with DC electricity. The electricity made by solar panels and batteries is DC. Sparkies are trained to work with AC. The rules for DC are quite different than for AC. Solar Safety equipment must be designed for DC. A DC circuit breaker is not even available in many stores that cater to sparkies. They have to go to a store that specializes in SOLAR.

But they might not know that, and buy the wrong circuit breakers, and then claim that they will work just fine…. DC solar equipment is more dangerous than your regular house wiring of AC, so it must be better-grounded. A sparkie doesn’t learn in sparkie school how to calculate the right size ground wire for a bank of giant batteries! They might try to use the standard green ground wire used for AC systems, and say, “There, Bob’s your uncle!, leaving you to piss around trying to get the right size wire and re-install it. (My sparkie actually connected a STANDARD 14-gauge green wire to the WRONG terminal of the batteries).

3) Did you plan ahead for all the components to fit in your space well? Well, a sparkie probably will feel insulted that you drew everything out meticulously, as if he couldn’t just automatically figure it out in his brain without paper. So he will change the whole set-up from the way you drew it, and give some lame excuse like: “You put in several unnecessary items, I can save you money on this…”And you end up with your inverter installed in a different place, where the noise of the fans will drive you nuts while trying to sleep, or trying to work… and the batteries in a place where you can’t easily protect them from children getting electrocuted by them, etc.

4) Waiting forever to complete… Sparkies don’t know what all they need to buy, until they get in the middle of the job, and since these items are only available at special solar stores, and sometimes are out of stock, they have to stop working and wait until its convenient for them to go shopping, maybe several times during the project. This will make your project take five times the time you thought it should.

What is the solution? Academy for Ecological Transition offers a certification for solar installers. We may be able to refer you to one in your area, or better yet, you can sign up to become certified with us yourself, and then do your own solar installation, or manage it, as well as get your neighbors and family and friends to hire you… or even set up your own business ! Solar industry is one of the fastest growing industries, right up there next to prostitution and loan-sharking, but solar is a bit more personally rewarding, and if you get certified with us, and buy the safety equipment that we recommend, then it is a bit less dangerous than these other two fast-growing and popular occupations. You might even be eligible for a scholarship to pay for your courses! So, please, go to https://transition.academy/home today and find out what it means to REALLY KNOW how to install or design a solar system.

https://transition.academy/home