Last updated: September 16, 2026
The stages, in order
- Site assessment and design (a few days). Measurements,
shade analysis, a look inside your main panel, and a layout. If your
electrical service needs work, this is when it surfaces — not later,
if whoever designs it is doing their job.
- Permit submission (1–3 weeks, jurisdiction dependent).
Plans go to your city's building department for structural and electrical
review. This is the stage with the most variance, because it depends
entirely on which city you're in.
- Installation (usually 1 day, sometimes 2–3).
Racking, modules, inverter, conduit, and tie-in. Bigger or multi-plane
arrays, a panel upgrade, or a battery push this longer.
- Inspection (days to a couple of weeks). A city inspector
signs off. A failed inspection over something small can cost a week waiting
for the next slot, which is why the details matter.
- Utility interconnection and PTO (1–4 weeks). The
application goes to PG&E, and you wait for permission to operate. You
may not legally switch the system on before this arrives.
The part people find maddening: your panels can be fully
installed, inspected, and sitting on your roof doing nothing for weeks
while you wait on PTO. That's normal. Turning the system on early risks
your interconnection agreement, so don't.
Where projects actually get stuck
- Panel upgrades. If your main service needs replacing,
that's a separate permit and a utility disconnect and reconnect. It's the
single most common reason a 35-day project becomes a 70-day one.
- Incomplete permit submissions. A missing structural
calculation or an out-of-date form means a correction cycle, and you go back
into the queue rather than to the front of it.
- Historic or design review. Some jurisdictions add a
review step. Piedmont is the one East Bay
homeowners ask me about most.
- HOA approval. California law limits what an HOA can
refuse, but they can still consume weeks. Start that conversation early.
- Roof work discovered late. If the roof needs replacing,
everything stops. This is why I look at the roof on the first visit.
It varies by city
Permitting is the least predictable stage, and it's local. California's
SB 379 pushed cities toward automated instant permitting for straightforward
residential systems, and where it's genuinely running it removes most of the
plan-review wait. Adoption across the East Bay is uneven, so what applies to
your address depends on your address.
I keep track of which counters are moving and which aren't, and I handle the
submissions. You shouldn't have to learn your city's permit portal to put
panels on your own house. What I can tell you by city:
Oakland,
Berkeley,
Alameda,
San Leandro.
How to make it go faster
- Get twelve months of PG&E usage data ready before the first visit.
- Say early if you're planning an EV, heat pump, or addition — it
changes the design, and changing it later restarts permitting.
- Deal with the roof first if it's near end of life.
- Start any HOA conversation the week you sign, not after.
- Don't wait on a rebate that may not come; decide on the economics
without it.
One timing note worth knowing: California's solar property tax exclusion is
scheduled to sunset January 1, 2027, and it applies to systems
completed before then. With a 30-to-45-day runway, that deadline is
closer than it looks. More on that in
the NEM 3 guide.