Daniel from Lincroft, NJ has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since December of 2020, and the house has taken three trades since. The generator came to us at second hand: another company installed it in November of 2012, and we picked up its servicing eight years later.
An 8 kW Generac taken on at year eight
An 8 kW Generac running on natural gas, behind a 35-amp indoor transfer switch in the basement on a 200-amp service. Taking a machine on at eight years is a different proposition from commissioning one. The installer is long out of the picture, nobody has an incentive to keep it going except the owner, and whether it starts in its fourteenth year comes down entirely to whether somebody has opened the enclosure every year since. Somebody has: it was serviced in each of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024, and went back out on a billable call in late 2025.
3,200 square feet of new roof
In March of 2023 a single layer was stripped to the sheathing and carted away rather than roofed over, and 3,200 square feet of composition shingle in pewter gray went on, warranted fifty years. The ventilation was rebuilt with it – continuous soffit vents at the intake and thirty-four feet of exhaust, sized against a calculated requirement rather than guessed. Ventilation is the part of a roof nobody ever looks at and the part that decides how long the shingle above it lasts.
32 panels and 12.96 kW
Two months later the array went on: 32 REC 405-watt modules on a SolarEdge Energy Hub inverter, rail-free mounting, split across two roof faces at 7.29 and 5.67 kW and estimated at 15,475 kilowatt hours in the first year. JCP&L interconnected it in June.
Why the roof went first
The two months between the roof and the array are the whole point. Panels are fixed to the roofing system beneath them, so an array laid over a roof that is due for replacement is an array that has to come off and go back on – a job nobody budgets for and everybody pays for. Doing the roof first costs almost nothing extra when the work is planned together, and it is the difference between one project and three.
Project Facts
- Location
- Lincroft, NJ
- Services
- Roofing Installation, Solar Critter Guard, Solar Panel Installation, Standby Generator Service
- Client since
- December 2020
Solar
- Panels
- REC Model # REC405AA-PURE
- Panels
- 32
- System size
- 12.96 kW
- Inverter
- SolarEdge SE11400H-USSNBBL14 HD Wave Energy Hub
- Mounting system
- Snap-N-Rack
- Estimated first-year production
- 15,475 kWh
- Share of the home's electricity
- 100%
- Electric utility
- JCP&L
- Critter guard fitted
- 204 ft
Standby generator
- Manufacturer
- Generac Model # 5870
- Rated output
- 8 kW LP / 7 kW NG
- Fuel
- Natural Gas
- Electrical service
- 200 amp
- Transfer switch
- 35 amp
Roof
- System
- GAF Timberline Lifetime Roofing System
- Area replaced
- 3,200 sq ft
- Warranty
- 50 years
Questions from Lincroft homeowners
SolarAre panels designed for the wind near Lincroft?
Yes. The array and its mounting system have to be designed to resist the applicable wind loads, and coastal and exposed locations can carry different wind-design conditions from sheltered inland ones. It is one of the reasons the mounting system and its engineering are chosen for the site rather than by habit.
Standby generatorCan a standby generator run central air conditioning?
Yes, when it is sized for it. The design has to account for both the running demand and the starting surge of the air-conditioning equipment. Load-management equipment can be used where necessary so that demand does not all arrive at once.
RoofingDoes a wind warranty with no speed limit mean the roof cannot blow off?
No. It is a limited warranty without a maximum wind-speed limitation for qualifying systems, and that is a statement about coverage rather than about physics. Storm damage remains possible and the coverage remains subject to the warranty's terms and exclusions.
Standby generatorCan the existing natural-gas service in a Lincroft home supply a generator?
Often yes, but the gas system has to be evaluated first. The review covers the generator's BTU demand, meter capacity, available pressure, regulator capacity, pipe diameter and length, and every other gas appliance in the house -- furnace, boiler, water heater, range and fireplace among them.