Standby Generator Installation and Solar Panel Installation in Hazlet, NJ | 4.68 kW Solar & 18 kW Generac

Hazlet, NJ · Client since December 2015

Donna in Hazlet has been a Green Sun Energy Services client since December of 2015. The solar array was commissioned the following January. The standby generator arrived eight and a half years after that.

18 panels in January 2016

Eighteen Hyundai 260-watt panels, 4.68 kW in total, on QuickMount rails with an Enphase M215 microinverter behind each one. Estimated first-year production is 5,754 kWh and the utility is JCP&L.

17 kW added in September 2024

The machine is a Generac Guardian 18 kW, model 7226, delivering 17 kW on natural gas, behind a 100-amp service-rated transfer switch with surge protection — matched to the service rather than to the generator, which is the rule and is doing real work on a house supplied at 100 amps.

The house is 2,200 square feet and its electrical calculation comes to 16,816 watts. A single management module takes the 3,000 watts of air conditioning off the top while the generator is running, leaving 13,816 to carry, which the machine covers with margin. It was last serviced on 19 September 2025.

What changes in eight years

The interesting question about this account is not why a household bought solar in 2015. It is what happened between then and 2024 that made backup power worth having, when it had not been worth having before.

Part of the answer is on the survey. There are three refrigerators in this house and a sump pump in the basement. Whether all of that was there in 2015 or accumulated since, it describes a household whose exposure to an outage is not really about lights: it is about cold storage in three places and water in one.

The rest of the answer is the general one, and it applies to almost every house on this site. Each year, a little more of ordinary domestic life stops working when the electricity does. Heating controls, internet, phones that no longer have a landline behind them, medical equipment, work that happens at home now. None of it is dramatic on its own and all of it accumulates in the same direction, until a two-day outage that was survivable a decade ago is simply not any more.

The array on this roof has been producing the whole time and had nothing to offer on any of those days. A grid-tied system disconnects the moment utility power fails, and must, so that it cannot energise a line a crew is working on. Eight and a half years is a long time to wait for the second half of the answer, but it is a very common length of wait.

Questions from Hazlet homeowners

SolarWho maintains a leased solar system?

The third-party owner generally takes on significant equipment-maintenance responsibility under a lease or power purchase agreement, but the actual obligations come from the contract. Worth checking specifically: inverter failure, panel failure, monitoring, labor, roof removal, animal damage, storm damage and production shortfalls.

Standby generatorHow can a whole house be carried on a smaller electrical service?

Through load management. One or more large loads are controlled so they do not start at the same moment, or shut down briefly if generator demand climbs too high. That is what allows whole-house coverage where the raw sum of every connected load would otherwise exceed the machine.

Standby generatorDoes new gas piping have to be pressure tested in Hazlet?

Yes. Gas piping subject to the adopted fuel-gas code must be inspected and tested before it is accepted. New Jersey adopts the 2024 International Fuel Gas Code, which governs the inspection, the test pressure and how long the test has to hold.