The drive from East Bayside to the job site in Cape Elizabeth takes about 25 minutes, longer if the Route 1 bridge backs up. Yehuda Gittelson leaves before 7 a.m. most mornings, thermos wedged between the seats of his Subaru, radio off. He uses the quiet time to think through the day’s install before he arrives: roof pitch, panel count, inverter placement, and where the conduit will need to run through the attic. By the time he pulls into a client’s driveway, the job is already half-assembled in his head.
That kind of pre-work is part of what separates a competent installer from a rushed one. Gittelson, who holds a NABCEP PV Installation Professional certification and a mechanical engineering degree from the University of Maine at Orono, treats a solar job site the way a surgeon treats a pre-op checklist. The sequence matters. Mistakes made early, particularly in mounting and waterproofing, become expensive problems years later, long after the crew has moved on to the next address.
“I’ve gone back to fix other companies’ work,” Gittelson said. “Improperly flashed roof penetrations, racking that wasn’t torqued correctly. That stuff doesn’t fail immediately. It fails after the first bad winter.”
Mounting Before Modules
The morning work is structural. Gittelson and a two-person crew start by snapping chalk lines on the roof deck to establish array boundaries, a step that looks simple but requires accounting for fire code setbacks, which mandate clear access pathways around the perimeter so firefighters can reach the roof if a structure fire breaks out. NEC Article 690, which governs PV system installation, also requires rapid-shutdown capability, meaning the array must be wired to allow voltage to be reduced quickly in an emergency. Module-level power electronics, the small devices mounted directly to each panel’s racking, handle that function on most residential jobs Gittelson runs.
Racking goes up first. Lag bolts anchor into rafters, each penetration sealed with flashing before the rail is attached. Gittelson checks torque specs on each fastener. A missed rafter or an undertorqued lag bolt might hold through a mild Maine spring, but the wind loads in a coastal nor’easter are a different problem. Once the rails are set, panel clamps are staged, and the modules come up from the ground in pairs.
The lifting is physical. A standard residential panel in 2025 runs around 450 watts and weighs close to 50 pounds. A typical residential installation in southern Maine might require 20 to 24 panels. That’s 1,000 pounds of equipment moved from a truck bed to a rooftop before lunch.
Wiring, Code, and the Inspector
The afternoon belongs to the electrical side. PV source circuits run from the array down through conduit to the inverter, which converts direct current from the panels into alternating current the home’s electrical panel can use. Maine requires that the total backfeed current from the solar system not exceed 120% of the panel’s rated capacity, a rule derived from the National Electrical Code. On older homes with undersized service panels — a common situation in Portland’s housing stock, much of which predates 1980 — that calculation sometimes means an electrical upgrade is required before the system can legally interconnect. Gittelson flags those situations early in the project timeline because a panel upgrade adds weeks to a permitting schedule.
The job doesn’t end when the crew packs up. After installation, a municipal inspector reviews the work against the approved permit drawings, checking wiring methods, grounding, safety signage, and structural attachment. Only after a clean inspection does the utility — Central Maine Power or Versant, depending on the service territory — approve interconnection and activate the net energy billing arrangement. Maine’s net energy billing policy grants residential solar customers one-to-one kilowatt-hour credits for excess generation sent to the grid, among the more favorable buyback structures available in the northeast.
“Permitting is where projects stall,” Gittelson said. “The install itself is usually two days. Getting from permit submission to inspection approval can take three weeks. Clients don’t always understand that timeline going in.”
What the Certification Changes
Gittelson earned his NABCEP credential after accumulating enough project credits across residential and commercial installations to meet the experience documentation requirements. Commercial systems, which are weighted more heavily in the NABCEP eligibility calculation due to their size, helped him reach the threshold faster than a purely residential career path would have allowed. His two years working on wind infrastructure in Aroostook County before joining Solaris Energy Solutions gave him a foundation in electrical load management and grid interconnection that most residential installers pick up only gradually, if at all.
The credential affects the job in practical terms. Some commercial clients, particularly property managers and municipal accounts, request verification of installer certifications before signing contracts. Homeowners rarely ask, but they notice other things: how a crew treats their landscaping, whether the attic is left clean, whether the conduit runs look professional or improvised. Gittelson pays attention to those details because he knows a referral economy runs on them. Southern Maine’s solar market is competitive. Repeat clients and word-of-mouth introductions account for a meaningful share of Solaris’s residential pipeline.
By late afternoon, with the inspection request submitted and the crew loading out, Gittelson does a final walk of the roof. He checks panel alignment, pulls lightly on each clamp, and eyeballs the conduit entry point one more time. The system won’t be live for another few weeks. But the quality of what’s under those panels will matter long after activation day.
“Twenty-five-year warranty on the modules,” he said. “That’s longer than most people own a house. You’ve got to build it like it’s permanent.”