Lol, I'm super worried about contractors doing crap looking jobs (for example if I get solar panels... Routing it down the side of the house in big ugly conduit). [...] Or maybe I'll do most work myself and have a licensed professional do final hookup
I couldn't find a PV contractor willing to crawl through my garage attic routing 50 feet of wiring & conduit. They wanted to go down the side of the house in big ugly conduit.
You might find a contractor willing to do "extra" work for substantially extra pay. But you'd have to expect what you're willing to inspect.
So what happened in the end? Ugly conduit or DIY?
In late 2004 we found a PV electrician who was willing to tutor us on the code, and we did the labor. We did all the mechanical and most of the electrical-- drilling holes in the roof, mounting racks & panels, and connecting the wiring together. We strung all the wiring across the top of the roof to the attic (through conduit as required by code), drilled the hole in the attic wall, and routed everything through the attic (inside more conduit) back to the outside wall above the service connection panel by the electric meter. I think it was a total of 70-80 feet, and only about 20 feet of conduit goes across our roof. You can't even see it's there unless you're standing in the right location.
The electrician checked our work ("Did they do what I asked them to do? OK."), mounted the inverter & manual disconnect, wired it to the service panel breaker, and then wired the panels to the inverter. Then (and this is the really important part) they signed the net-metering request to HECO with their license number. $750.
We tried to run our own PV permit through the city, but this was the early days of Oahu's residential net metering (we were permit #26). The permit people didn't understand PV and kept trying to tell us we were doing solar water heating, so we had the electrician run the permit with his pre-approved plans. That was worth every penny of the $150.
When the system was connected, they flipped on the inverter and everything worked great. We faxed the net-metering request to HECO that afternoon.
Two weeks later we got an unannounced visit from HECO's fraud/theft division. They had noticed that our electric bill had dropped and they thought we were stealing power. I showed them the system, gave them a copy of the net-metering paperwork, and asked them to give their net-metering guy (a different depertment) a call.
Two weeks after that the city sent their "PV inspector". He was actually an electrician, and this was the first residential PV array he'd ever seen. He was fascinated, but I ended up entertaining the guy for nearly an hour before he felt that he "knew" enough to sign off the job.
It took HECO another year to formally approve the net-metering agreement. I'm glad that I didn't wait on anyone's permission to flip the switch.
But that was nearly a decade and tens of thousands of PV installations ago, and today things move a little faster. Hawaii has the nation's highest per-capita residential PV use, and I'd say that three out of every four homes on our street have an array. HECO is now approving installations up to 120% grid penetration in most neighborhoods and is being pestered to go even higher.
At a home show a few months ago I heard that there are over 200 PV companies servicing an island with a population of just under a million residents...