My DIY Solar: Part 6 Enphase IQ6+ Microinverters and Q Cable 

I did in fact mount the microinverters upside down in this video. They were promptly corrected and I mentioned that in following videos.

First video series I've found, after searching and watching for quite a while on RU-vid, that clearly explains how all the Enphase components are installed. Nicely done! Thanks

The best DIY video on solar I have seen so far. The only down side is your music blows out your eardrums. You have a huge difference in the speaking and music volume

FANTASTIC info, sir! I'll be watching this one a few more times!

Thank you for taking the time to show us. Well done sir

Best enphase install on youtube. Thorough, yet concise. Thank you.

Just discovered your solar Enphase tutorials. They are awesome, exactly what I needed. Thanks so much. Ronnie Mechanical Design Engineer

Great job amigo. Crocs looking comfy on the roof 👍

Amazing video thanks

Thanks a lot. It would be very useful if you create a list of all the components you used, and point to them in Video descriptions. Awesome works.

Well done!

Just seeing this; great video. I'll look for the previous ones to see how did you do the layout (distance between rails and micro inverters. Thanks again

Nice video regards from Holland

Nice job!

I love the music takes me to my happy place. aka Me encanta la música que me lleva a mi lugar feliz. wow im in love with your video amazing job.

This guy held my solar hand all the way through my job: I thought I would share some lessons learned from doing my own solar install. Date of install end of Dec 2021. 1. If you pay a company to do your solar install, I seriously doubt it would ever pay for itself over 20-25-30 years. I also doubt your electric bill will be zero in the summer months as most solar companies flat out lie. Being inform, you can have them put their expectations on legal papers for your future safety. 2. If you do your own solar one can expect a 4-7 year return on investment. You will have to get educated on permits with your local city and power company. If I can do it anyone can. 3. Power Company Billing was my biggest surprise from this entire venture. Rocky Mountain is NOT solar friendly to the average home owner. The excess power sent to the grid for storage comes at a great cost. I discovered after a few months of billing that We pay RMP .077 cents per KWH. When you generate excess solar power, the excess goes to the RMP grid but RMP only credits you .04 cents per KWH. So, in others words grid storage is not free or cheap. RMP skims nearly 50% off the top. WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN: 1. When you have your solar designed and drawings engineered you have to figure in 1/3-1/2 larger system to make up for the RMP skim ratio. I was lucky and added 30% more panels then necessary because I wanted an electric water heater. So far my last 3 utility bills have been $13 the minimum fee RPM charges and that includes free hot water. Jan-Mar our bill was $45-$60 due to winter clouds with a typical electric bill of $100-ish in the winter and $375 in Summer RMP resets the homeowner grid storage to Zero March to March. Of course, RMP keeps the excess storage when the clock is reset. We lost $15 storage credit. Yep RMP keeps your excess after Mar billing is closed out and you start your grid battery storage at zero. This feature does not encourage being "green", It flat out encourages running ones AC to 68 degrees in July and August and push less out to the grid. So during the day your system pushed out excess power to the gird at .04 cents and at night you buy your power back at .077 cents. Yah get the KY jelly ready. 2) Another big disappointment is RMP in Utah takes ALL the homeowner carbon credit rebates. Most states let the solar owner sell the Carbon Credit which can add up to $100-$300 per month passive income. If Utah is serious about encouraging Solar for Homeowners the laws need to be changed. Only serious pressure on our elected officials will we make strides in Solar. Conclusion: Overall I am happy with my solar only because we did all the labor ourselves. We expect near zero ($13) per month electric bills from here on out. Beware that many States like Florida have increased the $13 minimum to $30 now.... so that must be our near-term future for residential solar. This year the homeowner will still be eligible for a 26% IRS rebate and up to $1200 Utah rebate. The crazy part of the Utah Credit: You have to pay $30-$35 ish bucks to set up a Utah Rebate account in order to claim your solar rebate. Another shocker! The 26% Federal IRS rebate for DIY is only for cost of materials. Your Labor is not deductible. One can however hire out parts of the job like mounting the rails and running electrical inside the attic. You will need receipts for the rebates. Pros: We find that it is more cost effective if we run our home ac at 68-70 degrees during the day and raise it up to 73-75 at night. The heavy use during the day results in less RPM skimming off grid storage but just enough to run the ac at night and draw from our grid storage. Not very "Green" in my mind but it is what it is. Con's: One has to be aware to not have too much excess "Banked" on the grid when March comes a knocking. You lose all excess. So in others words crank up the electric heaters, electric blankets, leave all the lights on and dry ones hair more often. Excess storage is not a tax deductible loss but should be! So in other words you have to manage your usage. Does not require much time but it is another thing to do. About 10-15 minutes a month. Bottom Line: Would I do it again? Absolutely YES. I would not hire it out but if one uses their own elbow grease and fill in with some contracted work it is well worth it. Yesterday was 92 degrees and my total draw from the grid was zero. I actually pushed 40kwh to the grid. What is 40kwh? enough to run 40 100w light bulbs for 1 hour or 4 ton HVAC system for 6-8hrs

Gracias Geat video!

Helps me understand how a system installed, then when I interview companies I will know who’s knows how it’s done or just bull

Great series of videos! @ about 12:37 there's a long vertical run from the lower row that runs up to the top row with the Enphase Q Cable. Did you have to splice/modify that in order to get it to reach or was there simply enough to make it? Did you use the portrait or landscape variation of the Q Cable (I'm sure you mentioned it somewhere in your playlist, but I forgot)?

Get Video Thank you! Can you advise on the box and components you used to join the trunk like to your line through the roof, shown below the enphase inverter

Great video thanks for documenting the journey. I'm doing something similar with multiple arrays as well. Question: the 2 single stands that come down seem to be joined parallel as you mentioned. That's the proper way to join 2 arrays?

I love your videos! In your junction box you combine tow Q-Cables into one. If this is to code why can't you make the combination in the Soladeck box on the roof? Thanks much.

Great video, very comprehensive. Would you recommended the Enphase IQ Combiner Box? Do you feel as though it is required, or just makes for a cleaner install?

Brilliant bit of education Sir. enjoyed watching you vids...? how many panels can you link together in parallel.

I enjoyed watching these videos. Great detail. One thing I noticed, you installed your micro-inverters upside down. Silver side with the Enphase logo should be facing up. Is that going to cause an issue when you actually mount the panels?

This is a great video. Thanks for taking the time. Here's a few thoughts. I would've run the grounds uncut from the rails to the grounding rod. Connections corrode over time. Similarly, with a pool, you'd run the ground around all corners of the pool unbroken/uncut and then to the grounding rod. Next, If that 12ga run from the panels isn't too expensive I'd probably avoid having a connection outside, on the roof, that could fail. Then, you need to leave more wire slack inside the boxes, 6 inches minimum. Also, its a bad idea to mix high and low voltages inside a connection box. They need to be separate per code. There's always that chance they could short together. You wouldn't want to see your Panels or Inverter go up in smoke.

wicked awesome - one question i cant find is what is the separation between the top and bottom rails - and does the 3 feet easment to the rail or the panel

This is a good video. Just curious, you did not do a center branch circuit. Reading about voltage rise, it seems to be a good approach to reduce voltage rise.

Amazing video with great details!!!! Again. I am planning very similar system with two arrays. Three questions: 1. Since my sub panel is about 20 ft away from the arrays I am thinking to skip the junction box and run the two Q-cables and the grounds all the way to the panel. 2. If I have to use junction box, can I use one in the attic? So getting all the wires in the conduit through the roof and then having junction box inside. I will have metal roof and try to minimize the penetrations. Is there a code requirements to have junction box or? 3. On the side where you have 5+12 panels why did you put two separate Q-cables and didn't run one cable/string/trunk cable? Thanks in advance.

What size/partnumber bulkhead fitting did you use for the Q cable/Soladeck?

did you have to put conduit in the attic or just staple the wires up out of the way? I was thinking of using romex...any concerns?

Does the Q-Cable come in predetermined lengths with the AC connectors already installed, or do you have to buy bulk wire and install all the AC inverter connectors on your own? Thanks

The City noted that I should use MC cabling for running in attic wires to the combiner as encased wires get to hot. Looks as though you're using something different. Can you enlighten me? Thx and Thank you for the video's, they've been phenomenally helpful.

Did you run liquid-tight conduit from the Soladecks to the j-box? If so, what's the reasoning for that instead of romex?

Thank you again for your Enphase videos. We had a long delay with our city getting final engineering drawings approved the second time. I had a toilet roof vent in the way by 12" so had to move one panel above. All our racking, IQ7 inverters, grounding and solar decks are now in. My son will be my attic rat and we plan to run the 150 ft and 50ft 10/2 romex and #6 bare grounding copper home runs into the attic this weekend. Should be ready for the city rough inspection next week followed by the final panel inspection the week after. Then there is waiting on the power company to swap out the meter to a bi-directional meter. Question if you have time: do I really need to document all the inverter serial number? The envoy seems to load them all automatically when I get to the boot up stage. My enlighten seems to know when you system starts up and they seem to know everything about ones system. I could be wrong

Microinverters are mounted wrong side up. You reduce the clearance under the module which will cause issues with air circulation for cooling. Also noticed that some of your cantilever overhangs are really long as is the spacing between some of the flashed feet. Hope you don't have snow load or high wind potential. I don't think the IronRidge rails you used are designed for those spans.

Can you sell the SRECs on a diy install?

Looks like you have the microinverters installed upside down. The aluminum plate should be installed facing up. Also the top rail and bottom rail of the rack system are not bonded/grounded.

Question for you and any other DIY solar installers. I installed my own system with Enphase M215 microinverters. Like their other microinverters these are designed with "anti islanding" safeguards to keep from frying a hardworking lineman if power is out. SO, the M215 required a "home run" 10/3 cable from the combiner box next to my electrical distribution\entry panel to the junction box at my array where the connections were made to the Enphase smart cable which connects all the microinverters together. The microinverters don't turn on unless they see that 240v. With that foundation, here's the question: do you see any harm eason why I cant take that 240 10/3 where it ends at my array and attach a subpanel for use at the array? The array I am talking about is 20 panels that comprise the roof of a pergola I built behind our house and having a subpanel would allow me to wire some 120v circuits for ceiling fan, television, stereo, whatever. Ideas? Pros\Cons?

Hello ! How is the AC connection connected to the microinverter, where is the phase connected and where is the neutral I can't see it writing on the plug from the Q cable?

at 1:45 you are working on a Box, What is that and what is it for? I am trying to learn for my own installation.

What's the breaker for on the lower left side in your combiner box?

Can you explain the red and black connections as far as polarity? The Fed and black of wire go into combined box breakers. Does it matter which side is red and black also the main house breaker panel. Which is red and black or does polarity matter?

How long will it take to pay off since you saved a tons on installation fees. What's you kw rate. I am at 8 cents so think the ROI will be longer for me.

Tha is for sharing. I hope to one day also do a enphase setup myself. I noticed that some of your top rails so not have a ground running to them. Shouldn't they have a ground to them as well or did I miss something?

Would you share with us your decision of using Enphase Microinverters over Solar Edge Optimizer?

Well done, but I would like to know if your local AHJ made you move the array for violating fire code with your placement of the system.

Haha, saw that bucket of salt. You must be a fellow reefer.

Nice install, have you had any trouble with any of you enphase inverters i'm thing about installing the enphase inverters. thanks

Hey bro you didn’t use any fire setbacks on your roof? I mean were are you located is no any issue if the city make a inspection on your solar system ???

I got a question about the micro inverters cables. I know that the each IQ8A come with a Q-DCC-2 Plug-n-play MC4 cable. Now for my project where I will have 16 panels (4x4) how many Enphase in portrait cables do I need to buy? It seems that in your awesome video you have a long single cable that connects up to 13 micro inverters. Is it that I need to buy 16 cables and they all connect together? Please help me resolve this dilemma. Thanks so much, Ronnie Shand Mechanical Design Engineer Jupiter, Florida

I thought with the IQ series grounding was not required? Or was that local code that required the extra grounding across the rails?

What are the connecters called and where did you get them for the q cables to go into the solar deck boxes?

Are you allowed to run bare copper through conduit?

What did you use for the fitting of the ground wire? I can't find a fitting that small.

Could you tell me the wire size that you used on your system ?

What size wiring did you use

What awg is your ground wire? #6?

You have more money than sense; if the panels don't face south in the northern hemisphere the panels don' have a chance generating the energy equal to the panels facing south.

Microinverters are monted upside down ?

Hi where did you purchase the iq terminated where on eBay thanks

Where did you get that junction box and what is it called?

I couldn't help noticing the shaded area on the roof ? Maybe a branch or two are on there way out nice job but please if I may say put on some boots its safety

8:19 = Din Rail..........Sorry, I had too.

How Can I buy enphase iq6 for India use. Please suggest.

Interesting, Did enphase authorize you as an installer so you could get their toolkit app? You really need this app to properly set up your system.

Why did you go with IQ6 and not IQ7/+/X?

I believe that the microinverters are installed the wrong way up. I think you have to turn them upside down. Could be wrong though.

Nice but what is missing is a schematic.

I believe your inverters are upside down?

Can you please tell me how to find the total number of water/Air tight cap?

Sir those inverters are installed improperly! They need to be flipped 180 but i sure you dived that out and it cost you a lot of time with all that fancy wiring.

Hmmmmm ...solar under all that shade 🤔

Please..no crocks for roof work. Id hate see ya fall off.

The way too loud music is annoying.

hate the music !

Why, why, why do so many RU-vidrs INSIST on putting UNLISTENABLE, HORRENDOUS, EXTRA LOUD heavy metal music on their video clips ???? It truly, truly destroys what would otherwise be a very pleasant and enjoyable viewing experience. PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP DOING IT !!!!!!! I’m not here to listen to your music choice ! I want to see what information you have on solar panel installation!!

Your video is not helpful

Lot's of liquidtite in lieu of conduit. Expensive & not very professional!