Scrambling on a roof I get paying for, but electrician labor is just insanely expensive

consider the risk premium

Is electricity more dangerous in places where electrician labor is much cheaper?

Consider the risk premium by doing all the PV electrical work yourself (illegal in Australia) and then forgoing any insurance coverage. You could save even more money by not having home insurance at all.. 🤷🏾🤪

price that out to same-rated parts and NEC requirements, and you'll be hard pressed to get _that_ much cheaper anywhere that has any money. then add the *actual* risk premium--the one that gets your insurer called

It's possible that NEC requirements are part of the problem! Does Australia have a higher rate of electrical fires and electrocutions than we do? What explains their rooftop residential solar costing 20% as much as here?

at a whack: higher pencil-out demand leading to more competition plus substantially friendlier legal liability framework and having owned a management company, NEC is one of the few standards so well-designed that arguing with it makes you wrong by default, we don't austrian-school the sparky parts

(not, to be clear, the actual language of it, which is a patchwork because they try to update sentences instead of rewriting, but it has *remarkably* few vendor carveouts and generally implements a massive safety edge that yes, you keep when dealing with houses)

I have read through the residential NEC and it indeed seems extremely reasonable. There are some dumb parts like kitchen island outlet requirements and # of kitchen circuits but mostly it seems very reasonable

My buddy who is a carpenter helped me build bookshelves that we used for my wedding and when I commented that this was easy and I couldn’t believe the ones that inspired the design were $1200 told me “you don’t pay for the first 90% of the job. You pay for the last 10% when we make it look good.”

It's also illegal here in Portland. www.oregon.gov/bcd/Document...

Nope! It's legal for homeowners much like any other electrical work. Still need it permitted and inspected. Apparently it's non trivial permitting though.

Yeah. They can require engineering inspections to make sure the roof can handle the weight, etc.

There is a prescriptive checklist-based approach that is much simpler now

Just in time for nobody to be eligible for the tax credit..🫠

So is that page I linked to that says "all individuals working on a solar installation must work on behalf of an individual or business with an electrical contractor license. This applies to both residential and commercial installations" just out of date?