city permits

[Mateo anas]

Wondering if are permits required for all cities in Ontario in order to put solar collectors on a garages roof. Here in st catharines the fee is around 1000$ plus a structural engineer to certify the assembly for an additional in the thousands.
Any input greatly appreciated.

[Dave Schwartz]

You can call your building department but I'm pretty sure every municipality is going to require a building permit since rooftop solar is an Ontario Building Code regulated addition. With that application (that cost me $275 in 2010) they are going to want wet-stamped signoff by a licensed engineer as well. For me, that cost $1000 after I saved quite a bit because all the structure in my garage is exposed and I produced my own CAD drawings which saved him significant time.

[Mateo anas]

The inspector was here couple days ago and told me the permit is i think 970$ plus the engineers fee to approve the installation. (more than i assume 1000$). So I took all of them down. Been on my garage for at least 8 years. (the neighbor complain to the City...).
I dont know if its worth to go all that hassle to have probably a minuscule EROEI .
Thanks

[Rob Beckers]

Hi Mateo,

So if I understand you correctly you already have/had solar PV installed for some years, and after a complaint of the neighbours the city is requiring a permit and stamped drawings? It never stops to amaze me why some people feel they have to make life miserable for others just so they feel better...

In general, some municipalities require permits, some do not. Some require stamped drawings, some do not. Some even require one and not the other: Ottawa does not require a permit (they used to but stopped asking for a permit many years ago), but they do expect that the home owner has stamped engineering drawings. They don't check (until the roof caves in), so there may be those that don't quite do that last part, but them's the rules!

Pricing too is all over the place for permits. We installed in some small communities that had a $50 flat fee for permits, and then there were places (like Ottawa) where the permit fee was a percentage of the project cost, which could run in the hundreds.

The stamped engineering parts is essentially risk mitigation for the municipality. They just want to be able to point the finger in case a roof caves or a panel flies off and kills a pedestrian.

It's sad really. Solar PV should be, and could be, simple, cheap and ubiquitous. The bureaucracy (between ESA, municipalities, engineers, and insurance fees) make it so it's too costly to have reasonable payback.

-RoB-

[Mateo anas]

Thank you Rob for explain the situation around Ontario municipalities.
In my opinion the fee of ~1000 for the benefit of providing clean energy to ones household and (Maybe a little surplus in my case through the sunny days) it is an absurdity and an oxymoron.
Never mind the fee for electrical inspection(~700 a few years ago)
So i had to take them down today all 12 panels on my garage and a small array of 6 panels on my house. The funny thing though is that they don't care if you have them on the ground.
Lucky for as though there is a ministry of "red tape reduction" i noticed now that we can complain...
What happened to the "future must be green and carbon free?"

[Robin Davidson]

Mateo, hi, sorry to see you took your panels down.Did you install them on the ground or are they gathering dust somewhere? I am curious as I have a cracked panel (see that post!) and wonder if you are not using the panels if you might be interested in selling a couple of them if the spec matches the panel that was cracked. The cracked panel is 250W, 60 cells. A bit of a drive from Ottawa to St. Catherines but there might be a way! Cheers.

[Mateo anas]

Yes i have some solar panels for sale. ill post them on market place or kijiji.
Also have couple inverters for parts. One sunyways gridtie and a hybrid inverter charger with a huge 5 kva toroidal transformer. Not worth it to come all the way to st catharines in my opinion. thanks.