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I find it quite ironic that the City of West Covina
has the Sun in their city seal because there is one thing I can
guarantee you, West Covina does not support solar energy.
I learned
this the hard way through the miserable process of working with City
Hall to obtain a permit to install solar panels in my backyard. I was
born and raised in West Covina and had a great experience the 26 years
I have lived in this city, although that changed in a heartbeat when I
began working with the city on our project, the battle of the solar panel brands.
All
I wanted to do was install a few solar panels, using UL listed parts
and a very popular pre-engineered ground mount called GroundTrac made
by ProSolar that has been permitted all over the US. When I first
started the project I thought obtaining the permit would be a breeze
since we've helped many of our customers secure permits for their
projects. Plus, I had Dennis Epp of Heritage Solar wet stamp the plan set.
Dennis is a well respected electrical engineer, C-10 contractor, and NABCEP Certified Solar Installer and his company
is a top solar contractor in Southern California. Going into the
project I figured the City of West Covina would be appreciative of a
homegrown citizen putting together such an important project that would
help solar energy move forward, but boy I was wrong.
I was confident our plan set was in good order before submitting it, because I googled "West Covina photovoltaic permit" and found a document on westcovina.org titled, Basic Information Required for Photovoltaic Plan Check Submittal.
I
submitted the three copies of the plan set on December 8th and was
instantly approved by the planning department. When I got the Plans to
Building and Engineering, that's where things started to get rocky.
They
wanted a fee to "check my plan" and if I wanted an expedited check I
would have to pay an even higher fee. I paid $166.50 for the "expedited
plan check" which guaranteed me a response on my project within 7
working days, in our case that would be December 21st, since the city
does not work on Friday. On the 6th the working day, I stopped in
unexpectedly to check on the status of my project and they told me the
plan checker had not even looked at our plans yet, at that point I
could smell the trouble ahead of me.
One of the plan sets we
submitted went to the West Covina Fire Department. They called me on
December 15th and told me they approved the plans, although I would
have to pay them $200 to receive it and submit it back to Building
& Engineering.
On December 22nd at 9:46a, the 8th working day,
a day late I get a call from Building & Engineering department
informing me to come pickup my plans. When I received the plans I
noticed the plan checker had made over 30 correction requests, now if
they were reasonable requests I would have not been so aggravated, but
in our case the majority of the requests he made were already in the
plan set!
Also the plan checkers requests were made in sloppy
handwriting, which made it even more time consuming to decipher the
silly requests. At that point, putting the facts together, I realized
that the plan checker had rushed through our plans because he
procrastinated till the 7th working day to check our plans, how
frustrating! Contacting the plan checker or meeting with him face to
face was nearly impossible since he was always "in the field" or not
working and he never replied to any of my emails. He did call me once
to discuss the validity of his requests and the conversation was very
defensive versus collaborating with me to get our plans approved.
To
make a long story short, after going back and forth with the Building
and Engineering for 6 working days, they issued me the permit on
December 30th and charged me another $457 for obtaining the Building
and Electrical permit. The entire process took a strenuous 12 working
days. We're not launching a rocket to the moon! I'm just trying to
install a few solar panels, this project should have taken no more than
a couple hours to approve and should have been done over the counter
with minimal fees!
To go solar City of West Covina charged me:
"Expedited" Plan Check Fee - $166.50
Fire Department Fee - $200.00
Acquiring the Permit - $457.90
---------------------------------------
Total $824.50
Shame
on you City of West Covina for putting me through 12 days of non-sense
and extorting $824.50 from me for doing the RIGHT thing. Encouraging
the adoption of solar power is critical to lift our economy out of the
recession because our industry creates green jobs and wouldn't you
agree that energy is a huge problem for the entire world?
Solar
Power is such an important element to both social and economic progress
and through this project I've realized that the primary road blocks
lies within our own communities. It was extremely annoying to see other
people acquire permits to install gas water heaters or even upgrade
their electric service to pull more AMPS with ease, especially when
those activities are much more dangerous than installing solar panels.
Unfortunately, what that means is the process will be much easier if
you want to increase your energy consumption, but if you want to be
producer and contribute to the grid, then you'll have to pay a lot and
jump through hoops.
What's next? We'll after the city comes to
inspect all the digging we have done, then we can proceed to build out
the solar array. I have a meeting with Congresswomen Dr. Judy Chu,
to share my horror story of going solar in the 32nd congressional
district and on January 19th, I will be speaking at the West Covina
City Council meeting to inform them they're in clear violation of
California Civil Code 714, also known as the California Solar Rights
Act of 1978, a little known law that is lightly enforced but prevents
any city within California to make the process of going solar
unreasonably difficult or expensive.
I hope by sharing this experience I can make the process of going solar easier for the next person. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Be the change you want to see in the world" and I intend to do that by enforcing the California Solar Rights Act of 1978 on any city that is making the process of going solar unreasonable for anyone.
