Josh Weiner, Author at SepiSolar

This live interview was facilitated by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

If you’re not already installing solar+energy storage for your customers, you soon will be. But which energy storage technology is best? What’s the price per kWh? How long will the battery technology last? Are Lithium-based batteries really the best? How expensive are flow batteries? How about flywheels?

You can ask any of these questions–or anything else–and get an answer from SepiSolar’s CEO and storage expert, Josh Weiner. Also answering your questions will be our special battery technology guest, Matt Harper, Chief Product Officer of Avalon Battery.

Before Avalon, Matt was a former VP of Products and Marketing at Prudent Energy and has 9 years developing energy storage technologies. He holds 7 US patents.

In addition to being CEO of SepiSolar, Josh has been designing solar+storage systems since 2004 and was one of the early co-founders of Green Charge Networks (recently acquired by Engie.). He now consults with developers, as well as various storage manufacturers.

Over the years, Josh and Matt have separately studied many different battery technologies, and they’re both excited to be sharing their objective knowledge and opinions, answering any of your battery technology questions LIVE at the EES stage at Intersolar or on our usual web platform at the same time.

Join us for Ask SepiSolar Anything – Live from Intersolar!

Topic: Ask SepiSolar Anything about energy storage technologies. Josh will be answering questions with our special guest, Matt Harper, Chief Product Officer of Avalon Battery.

When: Thursday, July 12, at 1 pm Pacific.

Where: Sign up to get a link to watch via the web or be in the audience at Intersolar. Get all the info and a reminder here:

P.S. If you or your company are on Twitter and want to meet other solar people behind the solar brands on Twitter, RSVP for the 8th Annual Intersolar Tweetup, which @SepiSolar is sponsoring. Space is limited so get a ticket before Intersolar!

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

If you’ve never sat down and had a drink with SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner to get to know him, here’s the next best thing: Listen to his 3-Part Suncast podcast interview with host Nico Johnson.

Nico’s intimate weekly podcast has interviewed solar luminaries such as Jigar Shah, Dan Shugar, and Stephen Lacey, so Josh was honored to be invited to be another guest on Nico’s show.

Josh and Nico didn’t exactly have a beer together, but they talked as if they did. They not only discussed solar and energy storage best design practices, but also about the influences in Josh’s life growing up and his vision for the solar+storage future. They talked so long that Nico had to break up the interview into three parts.

All three Suncast episodes are embedded below. You can also subscribe to Suncast on Itunes, Stitcher, or your favorite streaming service.

Here’s a rundown of what Josh and Nico discussed:

Episode 81: Tactical Tuesday with Josh Weiner

4 Questions Engineers should ask when evaluating energy storage $/kWh
Depth-of-discharge and efficiency factors
Maintenance and Safety of Lithium Batteries

Episode 88: Battery Net Metering Changes Everything

SepiSolar’s foundation story and what separates them from others
Lessons learned from Akeena Solar’s IPO and dramatic growth
The not-so-strange connection between Music & the Solar Industry?
The incredible impact a neighbor can have on a young mind

Episode 89: How a Downed Boeing Dreamliner and a NY 7/11 Store Influenced the Solar Industry

How a 7/11 in New York became the pivot point for the storage industry
How a downed Boeing Dreamliner changed Josh’s career trajectory
A clear case for including energy storage in the solar Investment Tax Credit
According to Nico, one of the best answers to his Crystal Ball question in the history of SunCast

Hope you enjoy these episodes and get to know Josh and why he’s so passionate about solar and energy storage. Oh, and if you want to meet Josh in person…

Register for the Intersolar Tweetup

The Intersolar Tweetup is a bi-annual Happy Hour event where the solar Twitter tribe gathers in one place to meet each other in person. See the faces behind the solar industry’s brands.

Aside from @SepiSolarJosh, you’ll meet Tor “@SolarFred” Valenza, our Director of Marketing who Tweets for @SepiSolar. The event is free to attend, but there’s limited space in a private venue across from Intersolar, so be sure to RSVP!

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner was recently interviewed by David Brearley in SolarPro Magazine’s “In-House versus Outsourcing Solar Engineering Services in the May/June 2018 issues.

Not every solar company needs to be outsourcing solar engineering and design, but Josh comments on why quality design firms can be the most efficient and cost-effective solar service solutions for many solar contractors, developers, and EPCs.

SepiSolar engineers aren’t just NABCEP solar+storage design experts, they’re also requirements experts, producing designs that meet the detailed requirements of of any AHJ or utility across the U.S.

Read the Interview Here

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

If you missed our first Ask SepiSolar Anything with SepiSolar’s CEO Josh Weiner answering solar+energy storage questions, you can’t ask any more questions, but you can listen to the whole session here:

Josh tackled some great questions from people tuning in to this live and interactive program:

What are some of the common KW inverter sizes for C&I solar+storage? (at 11:12)
When you’re doing solar PV plus storage, what kind of interconnection requirements, like 120 percent rule, do people face? Are you seeing more AC or DC coupling on the system? (at 13:20).
For commercial solar+storage, who are the customers that would benefit the most from solar+storage, and who are the customers that aren’t yet ready? (at 20:40)
What type of energy storage is available and viable for the Florida residential and commercial market? Which brands? Also, does storage benefit from the 30% ITC credit if installed in conjunction with solar? (at 26:00)
For O&M requirements for lithium-ion batteries for C&I solar+storage applications, is there maintenance required on a yearly basis? Or is it bi-yearly? What kind of components need to be serviced? What kind need to be replaced? (at 30:15)
Is there an unbiased accurate chart from an independent testing lab of expected life cycles of all that all the battery brands? (Short answer, yes, but there’s only one that’s public.) (at 38:02)
How does energy solar PV and energy storage work with virtual net metering and aggregate net metering? (at 43:22)
What is the unit based cost for battery O&M? (at 47:10)

Join us for our next Ask SepiSolar Anything

If you have more questions about solar+storage, or energy storage or anything related to solar, join us for our July edition of Ask SepiSolar Anything. You can be in the audience and ask your questions live at Intersolar North America or tune in virtually.

Topic: Ask SepiSolar Anything about energy storage technologies. Josh will be answering questions with our special guest, Matt Harper, Chief Product Officer of Avalon Battery.

When: Thursday, July 12, at 1pm Pacific.

Where: Sign up to get a link to watch via the web or join us live at Intersolar. Get all the info and a reminder here!

P.S. If you’re on Twitter and want to meet other solar people behind the solar brands on Twitter, RSVP for the 8th Annual Intersolar Tweetup, which @SepiSolar is sponsoring. Space is limited.

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

If you’re an architect, new homebuilder or housing developer in California, you’ve probably heard by now that the California Energy Commission (CEC) has updated its Title 24 solar and energy efficiency standards. Effective January 1, 2020, the update specifically mandates that all new California homes under three stories install solar panels on the roof or achieve an equivalent total home energy efficiency reduction through other measures.

To comply with Title 24, new homebuilders, architects and developers will be required to use Title 24’ssoftware for calculating the building’s “Energy Design Rating” (EDR), which not only includes inputs for solar but also for energy storage and other options.

To give builders more flexibility, the EDR is scored like a golf tournament—the lower the score, the better (or, the more “energy efficient” the home is). The goal is to achieve an equal-to-or-less-than EDR for a solar home than a comparable “regular” home, of the same square footage.

Depending on the square footage and climate, new-home solar will range between 2.7 and 5.7 kW DC to meet the requirements, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Rather than meeting the minimum requirements, builders may be better off designing their Title 24 solar systems with battery storage.

Why Builders Should Include Storage with Solar

As mentioned, the EDR software gives homebuilders a score, but there are many ways to meet that score, and one is combining solar with energy storage. Including energy storage will not only meet the minimum solar requirements, but will maximize energy savings for the home, offering customers a financial advantage over other homes.

When solar engineers design a solar system, they typically take into consideration the following factors:

The climate
The average amount of sunlight for the area
The orientation of the roof in relation to the sun
The amount of potential shading over the course of the year
The pitch of the roof
The home’s annual kWh usage

While these parameters are important, equally important are the utility rate considerations that system designers like SepiSolar factor into their plan sets. These rate policies affect the solar system’s ROI and include:

Tiered Rates. Tiered rates vary by utility and charge customers higher rates when they use more energy over a certain monthly amount.
Net Energy Metering (NEM). NEM is like rollover minutes for solar. Utilities will credit solar homeowners for any excess solar power that is exported to the grid. The value of NEM varies by the utility and the time of day that the solar is exported to the grid.
Time of Use (TOU). TOU rates also vary by utility. Customers incur charges when they use grid energy. During peak times, such as rush hour when the sun is setting and people are coming home, utilities charge solar and nonsolar homeowners a higher rate when they draw power from the grid, making any exported solar energy less valuable during that time of day.

That’s where energy storage (batteries) comes in.

Designing Systems for Overall Cost Savings for Solar and Title 24

Due to the above utility rate considerations, home developers that want to design premium homes that maximize utility savings as well as comply with the Title 24 solar mandate should consider including energy storage systems with their solar designs.

Solar+storage with smart battery management software will counteract the cost of tiered rates and TOU through “load shifting,” and “peak shaving.”

With peak shaving, homes using solar+storage will be able to use as much free solar as they can during the highest TOU rates while saving the excess energy in their batteries instead of exporting to the grid. Then, during peak TOU periods, the home will use this free stored solar-generated energy when the utility rates are high.

Additionally, battery management systems can also “load shift” the time when appliances are turned on or off, such as turning on a dishwasher, dryer or charging an EV when utility rates are low or when electricity can be drawn from the battery that was charged by solar.

Both peak shaving and load shifting with solar+storage encourage the home to use more of its own self-generated power, relying less on importing power from the grid. With so many homes using solar after 2020, homeowners with solar+storage will also help stabilize the grid, and can be paid a higher credit for any power the utility draws from the storage system during peak hours.

Another sales advantage for developers is that solar+storage offers some emergency power in case of a blackout. That is not the case with stand-alone solar PV systems. To protect power line repair workers, stand-alone solar systems will automatically shut down during an outage.

Things to Keep in Mind About Solar+Storage with Title 24

If you decide to meet your Title 24 solar mandate with energy storage, there are several requirements to keep in mind.

First, when adding storage to solar, there is a minimum required battery size of 5 kWh. This is a reasonable size that will allow for taking advantage of tiered rates and TOU, and it will provide a minimal amount of backup power in case of an outage.

Second, your solar+storage system designer and engineer will have to select one of three control options for the battery:

Option 1 – Basic Control (Title 24, Section JA12.2.3.1): With Basic Control, the battery system can only be charged by the solar system and can only discharge when there’s not enough solar power to meet the home’s current energy usage.
Option 2 – TOU Control (Title 24, Section JA12.2.3.2): With TOU Control, battery system will be set up with Basic Control, but will only discharge during the peak TOU hours of the day. This will change from season to season, and must be configured from the battery manufacturer or programmed by the installer at the time of commissioning.
Option 3 – Advanced Demand Response Control (Title 24, Section JA12.2.3.3): With this configuration, solar+storage systems will be programmed with Option One or Two. In addition, the battery control system must meet the demand-response requirement of a utility or third-party owner; that is, the utility or third party will be able to remotely control when the battery is charged and discharged. Typically, the homeowner will receive a financial benefit for this utility interaction with the grid.

The rules within each category will most likely be refined over time, so it’s important for your solar designer to be up to date with these standards and make any necessary changes. The above is a summary, so please review the entire Joint Appendix 12 to take full advantage of the above credits.

As longtime solar+storage engineers with thousands of projects, SepiSolar has a great deal of experience designing solar and battery systems that meet the new Title 24 regulations, as well as designing systems that comply with the local requirements of counties and other local authorities having jurisdiction (AHJs). Please contact us if you have any questions about these new Title 24 solar requirements for your new residential solar development projects.

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

Join SepiSolar’s CEO and battery expert Josh Weiner for Ask SepiSolar Anything, a live monthly video Q&A about today’s hottest

This post was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

Have you seen SepiSolar’s new logo? It used to look like this:

And now it looks like this:

When any company goes through a redesign of their brand, customers and frequent visitors can notice and often have an initial reaction (they love it, they hate it, meh.) as well as questions, like “What was wrong with your old logo?” and “What does your new logo mean?” and “What does the number 42 and meaning of life have to do with solar design and engineering?

These are all great questions, so let’s tackle them one by one:

What was wrong with your old logo?

Sometimes our solar engineers can be checking a permit plan set and spot something on the plans that doesn’t match or make sense. That’s how we felt about our old logo. The solar panel array made us look like a solar developer or EPC, and while solar contractors are certainly our customers, a solar array is not a reflection of design or engineering or who we are beyond being in the solar business.

Second, when you look at a brand, it’s supposed to reflect a feeling. Think about Nike and that swoosh of energy. We want the solar industry to recognize SepiSolar in that same way, to see our logo and have a positive feeling, and our old logo never did that. It was “just a logo.”

What does your new SepiSolar logo mean?

Designing and engineering a logo is serious business, and we did consult with a professional who asked us a lot of questions about who we are and what does our SepiSolar name mean?. The short answer is that “Sepi” means “the moment just before the first light of dawn.” So, light and energy emerge and grow from Sepi, and in the same way, solar projects and the power that is later generated emerges out of the plan sets that SepiSolar’s engineers create. Power also emerges out of the engineering solutions we solve as solar consultants.

Our logo designer created several options to have our new logo reflect who we are as a company, but this was the one that immediately resonated with us. Here’s why:

“42 and The Meaning of Life”

As to why we put 42 in the title of this post, if you didn’t catch it immediately, the number 42 is an important but ridiculous part of Douglas Adams’ book “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.”

It’s relevant to our SepiSolar brand because we sometimes feel like we’re part of that ridiculous universe when we deal with the bureaucracy of solar and battery permitting requirements, but it’s not part of our logo. We just thought it would be fun to slip 42 into a blog post title, and fun is part of our community of solar “enginerds,” so 42 is relevant…sort of.

Thanks for reading, and if you’ve missed our latest SepiSolar news and useful info like our SepiSolar Battery Translator Tool, please sign up for our newsletter or check out other news and blog posts! Naturally, please contact us if you’d like a free quote for our engineering services.

Josh Weiner is President and CEO of SepiSolar

This industry announcement was written by Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

Attention solar installers! If you haven’t heard the news yet, Schneider Electric recently issued a recall notice on their Square D brand 30A and 60A disconnects due to a defect in the switch mechanism resulting in the connection remaining closed when the handle is in the OFF position.

SepiSolar will be notifying our customers whose designs use these disconnects and offering recommendations on alternative equipment and/or suggesting ways to design around this issue. In the meantime, for your safety and the safety of your customers, we recommend checking any recently-performed installations where these disconnects were used.

You can contact Schneider Electric for information on how to service/replace defective disconnects. Here’s a link to the official CPSC recall notice.

Stay safe!

This post has been contributed by both Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert and Jim Jenal. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

Jim Jenal, Founder & CEO of Run on Sun, is a Pasadena solar installer and integrator who often blogs about the Los Angeles area solar permitting, codes and standards.

***

Sweet Relief – LA County Signs-off on Solar for Center-Fed Service Panels

Due to a misreading of the electrical code, many jurisdictions in the Run on Sun service area – and yeah, we are talking about you, LA County – balked at allowing homeowners to install solar if they were connecting to a center-fed panel. This has resulted in costly, and unnecessary service panel upgrades, and even prevented some homeowners from adding solar at all!

Well, good news – LA County has finally gotten with the program and agreed to interpret the code consistent with the intent of the code’s authors. Here’s the scoop….

We have written about this problem at some length before – you can see those articles about solar and center-fed panels here. The confusion arose because the code calls for connecting the solar breaker to the opposite side of the bus from the main breaker. Since on a center-fed panel the main breaker is in the middle of the bus, there was no “opposite side” to mount the solar breaker, according to that tortured interpretation. (In the photo on the right, you can see the large, main breaker in the center, with load breakers above and below it.)

To get around this problem in jurisdictions that held to that view of the code’s intent, various approaches were brought forward, all of them more dangerous and/or complicated than simply putting a solar breaker at one end of the bus. For example, a couple of years ago, San Diego Gas & Electric introduced an adapter ring to fit between the meter socket and the service meter. Soon thereafter, SCE adopted a similar solution, and that became our “go-to approach” for center-fed panels in LA County.

While County would sign-off on the SCE ring (or Generation Meter Adapter, as SCE called it), it was really an awful solution to the problem For one thing, SCE charged the homeowner just under $500 for the install, and their technician had to do the work in full arc-flash protection gear – a testament to the hazard involved. Beyond that temporary risk, the connection now left a pair of terminals in the solar disconnect with no over-current protection between them and the power pole transformer. Short that connection out, and nothing would stop that current from flowing until the wires melted!

A better solution was recently brought to market in the form of the B3-Bypass breaker which we wrote about last Fall. The B3 fits into center-fed panels and provides a much safer way to interconnect solar than the GMA ring. But guess what? Despite it having passed UL certification, LA County will not accept it, as we learned when we attempted to submit plans calling for the installation of the B3!

So, back to square one? Well not quite. While on the phone with County’s plan checker, I remembered that a code amendment had been passed in January 2017, which clarified the intent of the code when it comes to center-fed panels. We had cited this amendment to L.A. County last year, only to be told that County had not yet approved the amendment – hence we installed multiple GMA rings with center-fed panels last year.

Here’s the language of the amendment:

A connection at either end, but not both ends, of a center-fed panelboard in dwellings shall be permitted where the sum of 125 percent of the power source(s) output circuit current and the rating of the overcurrent device protecting the busbar does not exceed 120 percent of the current rating of the busbar.

This is what we had been saying all along, and the code amendment makes it clear that this is an acceptable thing to do – as well as being cheaper and safer than any of the alternatives.

So, I asked the plan checker, had County gotten any closer to adopting this amendment? “Oh,” said the plan checker, “we’ve been accepting it since January 2017!”

Sigh. So not true. At least none of the plan checkers that we encountered in 2017 were accepting the amendment. And for that matter, this plan checker did not volunteer the information. Instead, he was about to sign-off on the GMA ring without ever bothering to mention that there was a safer and cheaper way for us to meet the needs of our client! Is it too much to ask that a plan checker point out policy changes of which s/he is aware when discussing plans with a contractor?

Here’s the bottom line: If your solar project meets the interconnection requirements set forth in the quoted language above, you do not need to upgrade your panel, and you don’t need a GMA ring to attach solar to your center-fed panel in LA County territory. (And if it satisfies LA County, presumably every other jurisdiction should go along as well.)

If you need documentation – either as a homeowner to provide to your solar contractor who is trying to sell you an unwanted service panel upgrade – or as a solar contractor trying to convince a recalcitrant AHJ – here’s the link to the California Building Standards Bulletin that approves the amendment, and here is Bill Brooks’ write-up explaining the need and justification for the amendment.

Here’s the money quote from the latter:

The fact that several thousand center-fed panels in good repair have required replacement over the past two years when, in fact these upgrades are unnecessary, presents a real and unnecessary hazard to the field workers required to perform these replacements. Any time a service equipment replacement is performed on a dwelling, utility service must be interrupted and significant electrical work must be performed to replace the equipment. This exposes the electrical worker to hazards of potentially live conductors and inadvertent errors that could even be fatal. The hazards of these upgrades is appropriate when the existing service equipment is damaged or has outlived its useful safe operating life. Performing these upgrades on perfectly good equipment that is not a safety hazard to the dwelling is an unnecessary risk.

We couldn’t agree more!

Jim Jenal is the Founder & CEO of Run on Sun, a Pasadena solar installer and integrator. Follow Jim and Run on Sun on Twitter at @RunOnSun.

This post’s main contributor is Josh Weiner, Solar Expert Witness & Solar Engineering Expert. Mr. Weiner has been at the forefront of the solar energy industry for over 20 years and is an industry leader on solar-plus-storage engineering & design. Josh’s expertise spans both in-front of and behind-the-meter initiatives including residential, commercial, utility, grid-scale, and ev charging solar and storage applications.

“What does the SepiSolar name mean?”

“Josh, how did SepiSolar get started?”

“What makes SepiSolar different from other solar design and engineering services?”

Since founding SepiSolar nearly 10 years ago, those have been the most frequent questions I’ve been asked when people hear about SepiSolar. If you’re learning about us for the first time, or you’ve been a customer and wondered about those same topics, here’s the story:

“What Does the SepiSolar name mean?”

The short answer is that while searching for a name, I discovered that “Sepideh” is a Persian name that is often shortened to “Sepi.” Roughly translated, Sepi means “the moment just before the first light of dawn.” In other words, every morning, anywhere in the world, light and energy emerge and grow from Sepi.

In the same way, solar projects begin with solar design, and all of the clean power that is later generated emerges out of the plan sets that our designers and engineers create.

The Sepi “emerging light and power” concept also suggests infinite clean power generation. Even through the darkest solar coaster times, the sun always rises, and more plans for solar and storage are continually being generated for our customers. Moreover, our engineers are continually thinking about how to improve solar and storage technology, policies, business processes and grid models. The clean energy innovation never stops.

“How did SepiSolar get started?”

I founded SepiSolar in 2008, but my solar career started in 2004 with Andalay Solar (fka Akeena Solar). As one of the first national solar installation companies in the U.S., I learned a lot about the internal operations of a large engineering department, and realized there was a huge need for third-party independent design and engineering services to help growing solar companies during certain seasons, as well as for solar product development.

My vision was that SepiSolar would not only provide extra help to solar contractors with a high volume of designs and plan sets, but that we could also fill in the gaps for structural or PV electrical engineering needs that may be outside of the company’s core competencies, such as architecture firms or commercial building contractors.

I also wanted SepiSolar to be extremely flexible so that we could deliver a full menu of on-demand, seasonal or ongoing solar design and engineering services, such as installation feasibility evaluations, sales-focused drawings for proposals, P.E. stamps, product evaluations, or even develop salesforce modules for tracking inventory and the paperwork for projects.

With that flexible full-service mindset, SepiSolar has grown to become a leading national design and engineering company with a team of NABCEP certified designers and engineers working out of our Fremont, California offices, not overseas.

“What makes SepiSolar different from other engineering or design firms?”

I think of SepiSolar as a community of passionate “solar enginerds.” Everyone here looks at design and engineering through the lens of the entire solar and storage value chain. We don’t just draft line diagrams and crank out plan sets. For some design firms, that’s where the service starts and ends, but for SepiSolar, our services include our community of knowledge about the latest solar and storage technologies, policies, manufacturer relationships, and our experience with AHJs around the U.S. and abroad.

As a community of engineers, we’re also great communicators with each other and our clients. We regularly share information and complement each engineer’s knowledge base. And while some firms may chain their engineers to CAD monitors with MC4 connection cables, our SepiSolar engineers can also act as independent engineering consultants, visiting solar project sites, ensuring quality, improving O&M or troubleshooting commissioning. We also consult with manufacturers, developers, asset managers and storage companies, providing the entire SepiSolar team with a comprehensive and continuous feedback loop of information from all over the solar industry.

In addition to formal consulting, our designers also informally consult with clients at the start of every project. During these calls, we take into consideration the company’s preferences and various skill sets. For example, a roofer who installs solar may feel comfortable drilling holes into a commercial rooftop but prefer microinverters for simpler electrical work. Similarly, an electrician may be very comfortable with optimized string inverters, but prefer a ballasted roof design to avoid roofing issues.

***

Naturally, there’s much more to tell about how SepiSolar grew over the last 10 years and why we’re so passionate about everything we do. Perhaps the best way to learn more is to set up a free consultation with me or just get a quote for your next solar or storage project. You can also join our SepiSolar community by simply following us on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook, or joining our mailing list. Please reach out for any questions or comments.

Josh Weiner is President and CEO of SepiSolar.

SepiSearch

Ask SepiSolar Anything – Battery Technology Edition – Live From Intersolar!

Join us for Ask SepiSolar Anything – Live from Intersolar!

SepiSolar Confidential: Meet Josh Weiner Through this Suncast Interview Series

Episode 81: Tactical Tuesday with Josh Weiner

Episode 88: Battery Net Metering Changes Everything

Episode 89: How a Downed Boeing Dreamliner and a NY 7/11 Store Influenced the Solar Industry

Register for the Intersolar Tweetup

SolarPro Features SepiSolar’s View on Outsourcing Solar Engineering Services

Solar Pros Asked 8 Great Solar+Storage Questions for Our First “Ask SepiSolar Anything”

Join us for our next Ask SepiSolar Anything

What New Home Builders Need to Know About the Title 24 Solar Mandate

Why Builders Should Include Storage with Solar

Designing Systems for Overall Cost Savings for Solar and Title 24

Things to Keep in Mind About Solar+Storage with Title 24

Join Our New Monthly Q&A: Ask SepiSolar Anything

42, The Meaning of Life, and SepiSolar’s New Logo

Schneider Electric Recalls Square D Brand 30A and 60A Disconnects

L.A. County Solar Code Updated, Reducing Need to Replace Center-Fed Service Panels

Sweet Relief – LA County Signs-off on Solar for Center-Fed Service Panels

SepiSolar’s Origin Story: What Our Name Means & Why Solar Design Matters

CA Small Business Enterprise