Today the building department came out for the final inspection. We passed (didn't really expect otherwise.) You can view the project photo album by clicking on the meter below.
Yesterday the hole around the new service box got stucco. Today paint.
Now it is just a matter of time before all the details are in place and Southern Callifornia Edison starts crediting me for the excess power I generate. (Right now they are getting it for free.) Even without the credit (so that I have to pay for power used in the evening rather than drawing down on the credits) it looks like my August power bill will be $100 less than before solar.
The new electrical service is installed and the solar panels hooked up. The meter now “runs backward"!
We got a couple of good breaks (pun intended?) with the new breaker box. First, remember the power outage that took out the wine refrigerator? Well Edison was not done. They scheduled another outage for some finish up work on the transformer. Good news is that we were able to get the new service upgrade done on the same day. So we had only one day of no power, not two.
The second good news (...)
This year was (for me) just a short visit to the Orange County Fair. I took advantage of a volunteer stint Susan did for her local Machine Knitting supplier. She spent the afternoon manning the booth and I joined her in the evening.
Susan was demonstrating machine knitting to all who were interested. And from what I saw the few minutes I watched, there was a lot of interest from people of all ages.