02·ENE

Electrical & Energy

Rooftop solar, two Tesla Powerwalls and a Tesla gateway that carries the whole house through a power outage — automatically, with nothing for you to switch.

956 N Noble Loop · Showing Edition · Rev A · Aug 2026

At a glance

A rooftop solar array (36 panels) feeds two Delta inverters; two Tesla Powerwall batteries store what the house doesn’t use; a Tesla gateway ties solar, batteries and the utility grid together and provides whole-home backup. The grid connection is Clark Public Utilities.

Where: All of the equipment except the panels themselves is on one exterior equipment wall beside the house: Powerwalls at ground level, the two inverters above them, then the disconnects, the meters and the gateway. The array is on the main roof plane, visible from the corner of N 9th St & N Noble Loop.
Must know: In a power outage you do nothing. The gateway disconnects from the grid in a fraction of a second and the Powerwalls keep the house running — in the owners’ experience, so seamlessly that they usually learned the grid was down from a neighbor or the app, not from anything in the house. Everything else — production, charge level, backup reserve — lives in the Tesla app.
Status: Installed and operating. Solar energized November 2018; Powerwalls added 2019. The system is owned outright — no lease, PPA, or solar loan — owner-confirmed 2026-08-05. Powerwall generation, gateway model and serials to confirm at walkthrough.

Two white Tesla Powerwall batteries standing against the side of the house, with conduit and grey inverter enclosures on the wall above them. — The two Tesla Powerwalls on the exterior equipment wall. The grey boxes above them are the solar inverters.

2Everyday use

This is the system people ask about most and touch least. It has no switches you operate, no schedule you set, and no seasonal ritual. It runs itself. What follows is what it is actually doing, so that the numbers in the app mean something to you.

Aerial view of the rooftop solar array — rows of panels covering the main roof plane, with tall firs beyond. — The array from above. 36 modules across two roof planes.

How a day works

Think of the house as always drawing power from the cheapest available source, in this order:

Morning. The sun comes up, the panels start producing, and that power goes to the house first — lights, fridge, hot water, whatever is running.
Midday. Production exceeds what the house is using. The surplus charges the Powerwalls. Once they are full, the extra flows backwards through the meter to the utility and is credited to your account (see Deep dive — net metering).
Evening. Production falls off. The house switches over to the Powerwalls and runs on stored sunshine instead of buying power.
Overnight. When the Powerwalls reach the backup reserve you have set, they stop discharging and hold the rest in case of an outage. The house draws from the grid until the sun comes back.

Winter is different, and that is normal

In the Pacific Northwest, December production is a small fraction of July production — short days, low sun angle, heavy overcast. Expect the house to lean on the grid through the winter and to push power back out through the summer. The system is designed around the whole year, not any one month.

The measured record is a page of its own

Everything above is how the system works. What it has actually done — 97.2 MWh generated, 37.5 MWh sold back to Clark PUD, and eight years of production charted year by year, month by month and minute by minute — is on Energy Performance, built straight from the Tesla exports.

Reading the Tesla app

Everything is in the free Tesla app (iOS/Android), under the energy site for this address. Two screens matter:

Power flow. A live diagram with four nodes — sun, house, battery, grid — and animated lines showing which way energy is moving right now. If the line from grid to house is dark and the line from battery to house is lit, you are running on stored solar. That is the whole story in one glance.
Energy graphs. Day, week, month and year totals for what you produced, what you used, what you stored and what you sent to the utility. This is what you check once a month, not once an hour.

Backup reserve — the one setting you may actually change

Backup reserve is the percentage of battery you refuse to spend on normal evenings, held aside for outages. Set it low and you get maximum everyday savings but less cushion; set it high and you always have a deep reserve but you buy more power from the grid at night.

Open the Tesla app and select this energy site.
Go to the Powerwall / backup settings.
Drag the Backup reserve slider to the percentage you want to keep in hand.

A sane starting point

If outages here are rare and short, a low-to-moderate reserve captures more savings. If you work from home, keep medical equipment running, or it is storm season, raise it. It is a slider — you can change your mind any afternoon, and changing it never risks anything.

Tesla’s published default backup reserve is 20%. Note that during a long outage the Powerwalls will discharge below the reserve if they have to — the reserve governs everyday cycling, not survival — and the system prioritizes getting back above it once power returns.

Storm Watch

Storm Watch is an automatic feature: Tesla monitors weather-service severe-weather alerts for this area, and when one is issued the system charges the Powerwalls to maximum capacity — from solar and, if needed, from the grid — so the house goes into the storm with as much stored energy as possible. It reverts to normal behaviour when the event ends. You do not have to do anything.

Storm Watch needs grid charging enabled

Storm Watch can only top the batteries up from the grid if Grid Charging is turned on in the app. If you want the storm behaviour, leave both on. This is a two-tap check worth doing before your first winter here.

What an outage actually feels like

Usually: nothing. No flicker, no blinking clocks, no devices resetting.
The house keeps running. The Tesla app shows the grid line greyed out and the house running from the battery (and from solar, if it is daytime).
When utility power returns, the gateway reconnects on its own and the Powerwalls begin recharging. Again, nothing for you to do.

The owners’ actual record

In the years since the Powerwalls went in, the switchover has been undetectable in essentially every grid outage — the owners report exactly one perceptible flicker, early on, and otherwise only ever learned an outage had happened from the app or from neighbors. Two details make that possible: the transfer is faster than anything in the house can react to, and the backup covers the whole house — there is no separate “backed-up circuits” sub-panel, which is how most Powerwall installs are wired. Every outlet, every appliance, rides through. (Owner-reported; the app’s Backup History log is being archived as the objective record.)

What to be sensible about during a long outage

The Powerwalls have a finite amount of stored energy and a finite instantaneous power output. During an extended outage, avoid stacking the biggest loads at once — car charging, electric heat, the steam shower and an electric dryer all together. Check the app: if the battery percentage is falling fast, something large is running.

3App & account

The system is managed with the Tesla app — the same app Tesla vehicle owners use. You do not need a Tesla vehicle to use it, and you do not need the app for the house to work. The app is monitoring and settings; the hardware runs regardless.

Day one: getting the system into your Tesla Account

This is a real handover step — do not skip it

Solar and Powerwall systems are tied to a Tesla Account, not to the house. Until the account is transferred, the seller’s account still sees this system and yours sees nothing. Tesla runs a dedicated Property & Title team for exactly this situation, and publishes the process — both pages are in Documents below.

Two things about Tesla’s process surprise people, so they are worth stating plainly:

It is a post-closing process. Per Tesla’s published guidance the transfer cannot be started until after the sale has closed — so do not treat “Tesla transfer complete” as a closing condition.
The buyer drives most of it, from the Tesla app. The seller’s job is to step out of the way.

Seller, after closing: remove this home from your Tesla app.
Buyer: install the Tesla app and create a Tesla Account (or sign in to an existing one), then start the transfer for this address.
Be ready with documentation. Tesla’s process for Powerwall transfers asks for a copy of the transfer deed showing the new owner’s name, plus photographs of the label sticker on the Tesla gateway and on each Powerwall. Take those photos on move-in day while you are still thinking about it — they are the same photos this manual asks you to take for the Specs section.
Once the site appears in your app, set your backup reserve, confirm Storm Watch and Grid Charging are how you want them, and check that the gateway is reporting.

Confirm the current steps on Tesla’s own page before you start

Tesla revises this process. The links in Documents are the authority; the summary above is written from Tesla’s published guidance and is here so you know roughly what is coming and what to have ready. If anything differs, Tesla’s page wins.

Do this in the same week you transfer the utility account — the two belong together, and both are far easier to sort out while the seller is still reachable.

Warranty — and why registering matters

Powerwall: Tesla’s U.S. Powerwall limited warranty runs 10 years from the initial installation date and is transferable — a subsequent owner who provides proof of ownership can make claims under it.
Solar panels: Tesla’s panel warranty runs 25 years and likewise transfers to a subsequent owner of the home who provides proof of ownership.
The catch worth knowing: Tesla’s Powerwall warranty is conditioned on Tesla being able to reach the system for remote firmware updates. Tesla states that if a Powerwall is offline for an extended period, or has not been registered with Tesla, it may not be able to honour the full ten years — though it will honour at least four. Translation: keep the system registered to your account and connected to WiFi. That is the whole obligation, and it is free.

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

WiFi

The gateway reports to Tesla over the house WiFi. If you change the WiFi name or password (see the Network page), the gateway will go quiet in the app until it is reconnected — the house keeps running perfectly, you just lose remote visibility. Reconnecting is done through the Tesla app or the gateway’s own setup interface.

The Tesla Account email for this energy site, and the house WiFi password the gateway usesSealed credentials sheet · handed over at closing

4Maintenance

The honest answer: there is very little to do, and most of what people imagine — washing panels, servicing batteries — is not worth doing here.

Solar panels

Cleaning: mostly unnecessary in this climate. Western Washington gets enough rain often enough that rain does the job. Panels are glass at a tilt; dust does not accumulate the way it does in a dry climate.
What does matter is organic growth. Fir needles, moss, and leaf litter from the surrounding conifers can collect at the lower edge of the modules and along the racking. That is worth looking at once a year — from the ground, with binoculars or a phone zoom.
Do not walk the array. Standing on modules cracks cells invisibly and voids warranties, and this is a two-storey composition-shingle roof. If something needs to be cleared, hire a solar or roofing contractor with fall protection.
Keep the gutters clear. Backed-up gutters and debris dams under the array’s lower edge are a roof problem long before they are a solar problem.

Powerwalls

No routine maintenance. There is nothing to service, top up, or replace. Firmware updates arrive over the internet automatically.
Leave them room to breathe. They are air-cooled and thermally managed. Do not stack storage, firewood, or bins against them, and do not enclose them.
Do not pressure-wash them. They are rated for outdoor installation; they are not rated for a pressure washer aimed at the seams. Rinse or wipe with a hose and a cloth.
They will be warm, and they will occasionally make a faint fan noise. Both are normal.

Inverters and the equipment wall

Keep the wall clear. Every enclosure on that wall — inverters, disconnects, meters, gateway — must stay accessible. Code requires working clearance in front of them, and an electrician or a firefighter needs to reach them fast.
Glance at the inverter displays occasionally. Each Delta inverter has a small screen and status LEDs (Power / Fault / Alarm). A steady fault light on one unit is the single most common reason production quietly halves — see Troubleshooting.
Keep vegetation off. Shrubs and vines growing into the equipment wall trap moisture against enclosures and block the vents.

What to actually monitor

Monthly: open the Tesla app’s energy graph and compare this month to the same month last year. A sudden year-over-year drop is the signal worth chasing; day-to-day variation is just weather.
Annually: compare the year’s production against the design estimate in Specs (12,471 kWh/yr). Modules lose a fraction of a percent of output per year by design; a large gap means something is wrong, not aged.
After any storm: a quick look at the app confirms the whole system came back. It normally does.

5Troubleshooting

The one hard rule

Do not open any enclosure on the equipment wall. Solar conductors are energized whenever the sun is up, whether or not any breaker is off, and the Powerwalls are energized always. Everything below is done from the app, the ground, or a labelled external switch.

Symptom	First checks	When to call someone
Production looks low	First ask whether it is the season: PNW output in November–January is a small fraction of June–August, and a heavy overcast day is a fraction of a clear one. Compare the same month year over year in the app rather than this week to last week. Then look for a physical cause: new shade from a growing tree, moss or needle build-up along the panel edges, snow.	If a like-for-like month is down sharply with no weather or shading explanation, get a solar service call — and mention which inverter (SOLAR 1 or SOLAR 2) looks wrong.
*Production is roughly half* what it should be**	That is the classic signature of one of the two inverters being offline. Walk to the equipment wall and look at both Delta inverter displays. One dark screen, or a lit Fault/Alarm LED on one unit while the other looks normal, confirms it.	Call a solar service contractor. A single failed or faulted string inverter is a routine repair — but it will quietly cost you half your production for months if nobody notices.
Powerwalls are not charging	Check the app’s power-flow screen. If the batteries are already at 100%, nothing is wrong. If it is winter, there may simply be no surplus to store — the house is consuming everything the array makes. Also check that backup reserve is not set at or above the current charge level.	If it is a sunny day, the array is producing well above house consumption, and the batteries still sit at a low percentage without charging, that is a fault — call Tesla.
Power is out in the neighbourhood	Nothing to do. The gateway islands the house automatically. Confirm in the app that the grid node is greyed out and the house is running on battery. Then be selective about large loads for the duration.	If the house goes dark with the grid, that is a real fault — see the row below.
The grid goes out and so does the house	This should not happen with a healthy system. Check the Tesla app (on cellular data — the internet is probably down too). Do not start opening enclosures.	Tesla energy support, immediately. Note whether the Powerwalls show any status light.
The whole system is offline in the app	Almost always a network problem, not an energy problem. Confirm the house internet is up (Network page). The system keeps producing, storing and backing up perfectly while it is offline — you have simply lost the dashboard.	If the internet is fine and the site still will not report after a day, reconnect the gateway to WiFi; then Tesla support.
A breaker has tripped somewhere in the house	This is an ordinary electrical event and unrelated to solar. Find the main panel, look for the breaker that is not aligned with its neighbours, push it fully off and then back on.	A breaker that trips again immediately is telling you something real. Stop, leave it off, and call an electrician.

What a healthy inverter display looks like

Each Delta inverter’s screen cycles through a short status readout. A photograph taken at 11:56 a.m. on a clear day in August 2026 showed the right-hand inverter reporting Now: 2690 W · Day: 8510 Wh · Normal operation — power flowing, energy accumulating for the day, no fault. That is the shape of a healthy reading, not a number to match at every hour: the wattage swings with time of day, season and cloud cover, but “Normal operation” on the screen and numbers that are moving is what you want to see.

Emergency shutdown

The exterior meter and disconnect cluster: the solar production meter and the Eaton safety switch below it, the generation net meter, the tan enclosure carrying the solar PV placards, and a grey Square D-marked enclosure. — The meters and disconnects, photographed August 2026. Left to right: the Eaton safety switch (rapid-shutdown initiation device) below the solar production meter, the generation net meter, the tan PV point-of-interconnection enclosure with its full placard set, and the grey Square D enclosure discussed below.

There is a labelled rapid shutdown switch for the solar PV system on the equipment wall — the Eaton safety switch below the production meter, installed so that the fire service can de-energize the rooftop conductors from the ground. The same physical switch also carries a red AC photovoltaic disconnect placard on its door — it is one device doing both jobs, not two separate switches. The interconnection placard also references a main service disconnect; the main electrical panel itself is owner-confirmed to be inside the garage, on the north wall, directly on the other side of that wall from this equipment cluster — see Specs and the callout below for what still needs photographing on this wall.

When you would use it

You would not, in normal life. It exists for firefighters and for electricians. Know where it is, point it out to anyone doing work on the roof, and otherwise leave it alone — throwing it stops the solar system, and turning things back on properly is a sequence, not a switch.

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

6Specs & identity

Solar array
Panel count	36 modules, rooftop, laid out across two mounting planes; the main plane is visible from the corner of N 9th St & N Noble Loop
Permitted system size	11.7 kW — the City of Ridgefield permit card photographed at installation reads “11.7 KW SOLAR ROOF TOP” for this address
Design estimate (annual)	12,471.46 kWh/yr, 1,065.94 kWh/kW, 71.9% usage offset — from the PV engineering layout photographed during the build
Module make / model / wattage	to confirm at walkthrough — read a module label or the as-built documents. (11.7 kW across 36 modules works out to roughly 325 W each, which is consistent with the era, but the label is the answer, not the arithmetic.)
Energized	November 2018 (first array); array and battery buildout completed 2019
Ownership	Owned outright — no lease, power-purchase agreement, or solar loan attached to the system. Owner-confirmed, 2026-08-05; this was the top open sale-paperwork question on this page, and it is now settled.
Roof planes / racking layout	owner's edition

Inverters
Type	Two Delta string inverters with integrated DC disconnects, wall-mounted on the exterior equipment wall
Labelling in place	Marked SOLAR 1 and SOLAR 2 — use these names when you call for service
Exact model	Nameplate photographed August 2026: top line reads SOLIVIA, then a number, then TL (Delta’s transformerless string-inverter line). The model-number digits are not resolvable at that resolution. To confirm at walkthrough — a straight-on nameplate photo of each unit settles the exact model
String placard, SOLAR 2 (read from the install photo)	owner's edition
String placard, SOLAR 1	owner's edition
PV point of interconnection placard	owner's edition
Serial numbers	owner's edition

Batteries & gateway
Batteries	Two Tesla Powerwall units, floor-standing, outdoor-mounted on the equipment wall
Powerwall generation	to confirm at walkthrough — the generation determines usable capacity and power rating, so this page deliberately quotes no kWh figure until it is read off the unit
Gateway	A Tesla gateway ties solar, batteries and grid together and performs the backup switching
Gateway model	to confirm at walkthrough — open the app’s system information or photograph the enclosure label
Backup scope	Whole-home backup
Serial numbers (Powerwalls, gateway)	owner's edition
Which loads are on backup	owner's edition

Service, metering & utility
Electric utility	Clark Public Utilities — confirmed from the meter face in the build photographs
Metering	Two Clark Public Utilities meters side by side on the equipment wall: a Landis+Gyr AIRPOINT HP, detented, production meter (labelled “Solar Generation Output” — detented means it can only register generation, never run backwards) and an Itron generation net meter (labelled “Parallel Generation Output”, ANSI C12.19). Both are Form 2S, Class 200, 240 V, 3-wire
Net metering	Clark PUD net metering (program cap 100 kW AC). Credits roll over monthly; unused credit is granted to the utility each March 31 (RCW 80.60.030)
Rapid shutdown	A single Eaton exterior safety switch below the production meter carries two red placards on the same door — “AC photovoltaic disconnect” and “Rapid shutdown switch for solar PV system.” It is one physical device doing both jobs, and it is the RSD initiation device the interconnection placard refers to
Main electrical panel	Located, owner-confirmed (2026-08-05): north side of the garage, on the north wall just left of the main garage door — directly on the other side of that wall from the exterior electrical equipment (meters, inverters, Powerwalls). Photo and full breaker schedule still to gather
Service size (amps)	to confirm at walkthrough — read the main breaker
Utility account number	owner's edition
Meter numbers & serials	owner's edition
Net meter reading, Aug 5 2026	owner's edition
Permit numbers (City of Ridgefield)	owner's edition
Installer of record	The permit card names a Washington State contractor; the entry appears to begin “TESL”, consistent with a Tesla installation, but the photograph is not legible enough to be certain — confirm the exact entity from the City’s permit record
Tesla Account login for the energy site	see credentials sheet
Clark Public Utilities account login	see credentials sheet

Main panel breaker schedule

The main panel is the one place in this manual where a buyer genuinely needs a page of detail — which breaker controls what, so that you are not flipping switches at 10 p.m. guessing.

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

Why this table is in the owner’s edition only

A breaker-by-breaker schedule tells a stranger exactly how to take parts of this house offline. It belongs in the buyer’s copy, in full, and nowhere else. Serials and configuration values are hidden for the same reason; passwords appear in no edition at all — they are on the sealed credentials sheet.

7Documents & links

Official Tesla, utility and state sources. These are the pages that actually answer questions about this system — archived locally in the buyer’s edition so the manual works with no internet.

Tesla — ownership transfer (start here on day one)

Tesla — Transferring ownership of a Powerwall
The official Powerwall transfer process on sale of the home.
Tesla — Transferring ownership of solar panels
The solar-side transfer. Where both were Tesla-installed, the solar transfer carries the Powerwalls with it.
Tesla — Real estate FAQs
Tesla’s own answers for buyers, sellers and agents in a solar/Powerwall home sale.
Tesla — Property & title
Tesla’s dedicated Property & Title team and what they need from you.
Tesla — Manage access to an energy system
Adding and removing people from the energy site — the day-two housekeeping step.

Tesla — operating the system

Tesla — Powerwall support
The Powerwall support hub: operation, settings, troubleshooting.
Tesla — Powerwall owner documents
Owner’s manuals and datasheets by Powerwall generation. Download the one matching this house once the generation is confirmed.
Tesla — Powerwall 2 owner’s manual
For a Powerwall 2 installation. Archived locally — likely match; Powerwall generation is not yet serial-confirmed for this house.
Tesla — Powerwall 3 owner’s manual
For a Powerwall 3 installation.
Tesla — Powerwall 2 AC + Backup Gateway 2 installation manual (PDF)
Tesla does not publish a standalone Backup Gateway 2 manual — GW2 content is bundled into this combined installation manual. Archived via an archive.org capture (the live tesla.com link 403s). Series-level — replace once the exact gateway model is confirmed.
Tesla — Solar Panels System Manual (PDF)
Tesla’s general residential solar-panel system manual — covers the Tesla-branded array/install/warranty only, not the Delta/Solivia inverters. Series-level — replace once the exact array configuration is confirmed.
Tesla — Backup reserve
What the reserve slider does; Tesla’s default is 20%.
Tesla — Storm Watch
Automatic pre-storm charging. Requires Grid Charging to be enabled.
Tesla — the Tesla app for energy
The app itself: power flow, energy graphs, settings.
Tesla — Powerwall limited warranty (USA, PDF)
10 years from installation, transferable on proof of ownership.
Tesla — solar panel warranty (PDF)
25 years, transferable to a subsequent owner of the home.

Utility & regulatory

Clark Public Utilities — solar net metering
The program page for the utility serving this address.
Clark PUD — net metering interconnection standards (2024, PDF)
The current technical and program standards.
Clark PUD — net metering agreement (PDF)
The agreement itself — including the March 31 annual credit true-up and the assignment clause.
Clark PUD — net metering checklist (PDF)
What the utility requires for an interconnection. Useful if you ever expand the array.
Clark PUD — service area maps
Clark PUD serves all of Clark County, including Ridgefield. (It does not supply water here — the City of Ridgefield does.)
Washington RCW 80.60 — Net metering of electricity
The Washington statute behind net metering.
RCW 80.60.030 — credits and the annual true-up
Monthly rollover, and the March 31 true-up at which unused credits go to the utility.
RCW 80.60.020 — program availability
Net metering is first-come, first-served until the earlier of June 30, 2029 or a 4%-of-1996-peak-demand cap.
City of Ridgefield
Where to request the solar and electrical permit records for this address (the permit card is photographed in the build archive, but its number is not legible).

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

To archive (Phase B)

Pull down the Powerwall owner’s manual and warranty PDF for the confirmed generation, the Tesla gateway installation manual, the Delta inverter datasheet and manual once the model is confirmed, the as-built PV plan set, and this property’s executed Clark Public Utilities interconnection agreement, into the local documents library.

Section 8Technical reference ExpandCollapse

The engineering layer — for a buyer's technician, or a curious owner.

Written for a buyer who wants to know how it is actually wired, and for the electrician or solar tech they will eventually call. This is a conventional, well-executed AC-coupled retrofit: string inverters feeding an AC point of interconnection ahead of a Tesla gateway, with the gateway providing whole-home islanding.

The equipment wall, left to right

The two Tesla Powerwalls at ground level, the two Delta string inverters mounted on the wall above them, and a grey Square D-marked enclosure beside the inverters. — The equipment wall, photographed August 2026 — Powerwalls at ground level, inverters above. The left inverter carries a white “SOLAR 1” tag; the grey enclosure at right is discussed below.

Everything lives on a single exterior wall, in the order the power flows. That is worth pointing out to anyone who works on the house: they can see the entire system, and every disconnect for it, standing in one place.

Two Delta string inverters labelled SOLAR 1 and SOLAR 2, each with an integrated DC disconnect below it. — The two Delta inverters, labelled SOLAR 1 and SOLAR 2, each with its own DC disconnect and string placard.

A photograph of the nameplate confirms the inverter family, if not yet the exact model: the top line reads SOLIVIA, followed by a number and TL — Delta’s transformerless string-inverter line. The specific digits are not legible at the resolution photographed so far. To confirm at walkthrough — a straight-on nameplate photo settles the exact model.

The meters and disconnects

The exterior meter and disconnect cluster: two utility meters, an Eaton safety switch, and the tan enclosure carrying the solar PV placards, beside a grey Square D enclosure. — The meter and disconnect cluster, photographed August 2026. Left to right: the Eaton safety switch (rapid-shutdown initiation device) below the solar production meter, the generation net meter, the tan PV point-of-interconnection enclosure, and the grey Square D enclosure.

Both utility meters are legible in the photograph and name themselves precisely. The production meter (labelled “Solar Generation Output”) is a Landis+Gyr AIRPOINT HP, detented — meaning it can register generation only and cannot run backwards — Form 2S, Class 200, 240 V, 3-wire, Clark Public Utilities. Beside it, the net meter (labelled “Parallel Generation Output”) is an Itron ANSI C12.19 watt-hour meter, also Form 2S / Class 200 / 240 V, which nets what the house imports against what it exports.

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

A separate red label on the net-meter enclosure reads “Caution — dual power source — second source is energy storage system” — the utility’s own equipment calling out the two Powerwalls by function. The tan enclosure beside the meters carries the full NEC 690/706 placard set: a red banner (“Solar PV system equipped with rapid shutdown”), a white conductor-warning panel, the yellow caution panel with the four disconnect-location blanks discussed above, and a red point-of-interconnection warning panel whose own handwritten AC current/voltage values are too faded to read reliably.

Where the main panel actually is

Settled: the owner confirms the main electrical panel is inside the garage, on the north wall, just left of the main garage door — directly on the other side of that wall from this exterior equipment cluster (meters, inverters, Powerwalls). That matches the hand-lettered yellow placard’s “Main Service Disconnect” blank, which appears to read Garage. The grey enclosure bearing a Square D mark, standing on this same exterior wall beside the tan interconnection enclosure, is therefore not the main panel — what it actually is remains open, and its own label is not in frame in any photograph taken so far. To gather: a photograph of the garage panel with its door open and the breaker directory legible, and — separately, out of curiosity rather than necessity — a label photo of the grey Square D enclosure.

The engineering layout

The PV engineering layout drawing: roof planes with module blocks, rapid-shutdown devices, fire setbacks, and a legend of meters, inverters and disconnects. — The PV engineering layout from the build. Top right: system size 11.7 kW, estimated 12,471.46 kWh/yr, 1,065.94 kWh/kW, 71.9% usage offset.

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

One-line, in words

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

How backup switching actually works

A grid-tied solar array on its own cannot power a house during an outage. That surprises people, and it is worth understanding, because it is exactly the problem the gateway and the batteries solve.

Anti-islanding. A normal grid-tied inverter is required by interconnection standards to shut down the instant the grid disappears. If it did not, it would keep energizing the utility’s conductors — and the lineworker who thinks the circuit is dead would find out otherwise. So without a battery system, solar goes dark exactly when you want it.
The gateway is a fast transfer switch with a brain. It monitors the utility connection continuously. When the grid fails, it physically opens the connection to the utility, isolating the house — creating a deliberate, safe island.
The Powerwalls form the grid. Inside the island, the Powerwall inverters become the voltage and frequency reference — they are the grid now. This happens fast enough that in practice nothing in the house reacts — the owners’ record is one perceptible flicker ever, across years of outages.
Solar rejoins. Because there is now a stable AC waveform to synchronize to, the Delta inverters can restart and produce into the island. That is the real payoff of pairing solar with batteries: during a multi-day outage the array recharges the Powerwalls each day, so the house is not simply spending down a fixed reserve.
Curtailment. When the batteries fill during an outage and the house cannot use everything the array is making, the system sheds surplus solar — typically by shifting frequency slightly so the string inverters throttle back. Nothing is wrong when you see this.
Reconnection. When utility power returns and stays stable for a qualifying interval, the gateway closes back onto the grid and normal operation resumes automatically.

Whole-home backup has one honest caveat

Whole-home backup means every circuit is available during an outage — not that the batteries can run every circuit simultaneously forever. Two Powerwalls have a real continuous power limit and a real stored-energy limit. In a long outage, treat EV charging, electric resistance heat and the steam shower as luxuries to schedule around solar production, not to run at 2 a.m.

Net metering and what happens to exported power

The house is interconnected with Clark Public Utilities under Washington’s net-metering framework (RCW 80.60). The mechanics that matter to an owner:

Netting. Power exported to the grid is credited against power imported; you are billed on the net. There are two meters on the equipment wall precisely so both directions and the raw solar production are measured.
Monthly rollover. If you export more than you import in a billing period, the excess kilowatt-hours are credited and appear on the following period’s bill (RCW 80.60.030(3)(b); Clark PUD’s net metering agreement §2(c)(ii)). This is what makes a July surplus useful in December.
Annual true-up: March 31. Both the statute and Clark PUD’s own agreement are explicit — on March 31 of each year, any unused kilowatt-hour credit accumulated over the preceding April 1–March 31 program year is granted to the utility with no compensation. Credits do not accrue forever, and they are never cashed out.
So the system is sized to offset, not to sell. The design estimate for this array is a 71.9% usage offset — deliberately under 100%. That is the correct design under this rule: a system that over-produces annually simply donates the surplus every March.
Program cap. Clark PUD net-meters systems up to 100 kW AC; this array is nowhere near that, so there is headroom if a future owner ever expands. Washington’s program itself is first-come, first-served until the earlier of June 30, 2029 or the point at which the utility’s cumulative net-metered capacity reaches 4% of its 1996 peak demand (RCW 80.60.020) — an existing interconnected system is what you want to be on the right side of.

The one utility conversation not to skip

Clark PUD’s net metering agreement says the customer may not assign its rights without the utility’s written consent, and the agreement is silent on what happens when the property is sold. Assume you will need a net metering agreement in your own name, and raise it in the same call in which you open the electric account: netmetering@clarkpud.com · (360) 992-3244. Confirm at the same time whether any accumulated credit balance transfers with the account, and note the answer here. To confirm with the utility.

Rapid shutdown

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.

What to gather to finish this page

Owner's edition

Full details in the owner's edition — serial numbers, configuration and identity details continue in the complete manual, handed to the buyer at closing.