Interesting and useful -- thanks. My understanding is that, at least for residential installations, the city sends an inspector to check things before you're allowed to turn the system on. This would appear to avoid the first-party inspector issues identified in the article, but are the city inspectors sufficiently "strict" or should I hire my own for peace of mind?
I saw one non-solar project where the city inspector seemed to be friends with the electrical contractor. They spent 20 minutes shooting the breeze, then the inspector did a super-fast scan of things, signed off, and left.
May be best to watch the inspector do the inspection?
