Johnny Solarseed: DIY Energy Independence

The Origin

It started with a quote. We’d built a cabin from scratch in Welches, Oregon - framed it, wired it, plumbed it. When it came time to add solar, the quotes came back: $30K, $42K, $50K. For a grid-tied system that would shut down during a power outage unless we added another $10K in battery equipment.

We’d just built an entire house with our own hands. The idea that we couldn’t wire up some solar panels without a $50K installer didn’t sit right.

So we went down the rabbit hole. And we found something interesting: Oregon, almost by accident, has created the most DIY-friendly solar regulatory environment in the country. Four legal pathways stack together - a homeowner licensing exemption, a 200W safe harbor, permit-exempt detached structures, and a standalone system carve-out that avoids utility interconnection entirely. Nobody was putting all of this together in one place.

What Johnny Solarseed Is

Johnny Solarseed is the complete pathway for Oregon homeowners who want to build standalone solar systems on their own property, legally, safely, and with their own hands. The name is a riff on Johnny Appleseed - planting seeds of energy independence, one shed and one garage at a time.

It’s not a solar company. It’s an educational platform with interactive tools and a consulting option for people who want a second set of eyes. All the information is free. No paywalls, no gated content, no sales pitch.

The Learn Section

This is the heart of the site - a complete, detailed guide to designing and building a solar system from scratch. Not a blog post with tips. Not a YouTube playlist. A structured curriculum that walks through the entire process in order, because the order matters.

It starts with mindset (solar is a project, not a purchase - insulate before you generate) and moves through the full design sequence: define your goals, know your numbers, choose panels, size your inverter, design your strings, size your battery, wire it safely. Each page is thorough - the Panels page covers wattage options, physical sizing, mounting approaches, shade analysis, and the panel-inverter iterative loop. The Inverters page covers continuous output sizing, surge capacity, MPPT specs, 120V vs 240V decisions, and the rebadge reality (half the brands are the same OEM hardware). String Design walks through the voltage math that keeps your system inside the MPPT window across seasons.

Then it goes beyond design: Worked Examples with two complete system designs and real costs, Sourcing (where to buy, new vs refurbished, what to spend on vs save on), Building (installation order, common mistakes, step-by-step), and Living With Solar (the obsessive first week, seasonal reality, maintenance, and when to expand).

The Build Guides

Separate from Learn, the Guides section provides specific build recipes with shopping lists, wiring diagrams, and step-by-step instructions:

• System 1: 200W Safe Harbor - build it this weekend, no permits, no inspections
• System 2: Permitted Standalone - the full 3.2kW system with permits and inspection

The Oregon Section

Oregon-specific legal and regulatory guidance: the four stacked legal pathways, ORS citations, permit processes, what the inspector checks, and what happens if you skip it. This is the part nobody else has put together in one place.

The Rate Calculator

This is the tool we wished existed when we were trying to understand our own electric bill. Oregon’s PGE Schedule 7 TOU rate isn’t just three tiers - it’s three tiers plus regulatory adjustments, state pass-throughs, program charges, fixed monthly fees, and taxes. The published rate and the effective rate are different numbers, and the gap matters when you’re deciding whether solar pencils out.

The Rate Calculator breaks every line item apart: per-kWh tier rates, BPA credits, wildfire mitigation surcharges, Energy Trust funding, transportation electrification charges, city and county taxes. It computes the all-in effective rate and exports YAML configuration for the Solarseed TOU Home Assistant plugin. That exported config is what powers the energy tracking in our own Smart Home Lab.

The Energy Lab

The Energy Lab lets you build a virtual version of your house and see exactly what your electricity costs. Toggle devices on and off, slide usage up and down, watch the bill respond in real time. It shows where your money actually goes - not the advertised rate, but the effective rate after all the fees, tiers, and TOU schedules shake out.

It’s a prototype, but it already answers the question most homeowners can’t: “what does running my dryer actually cost me?”

The Home Assistant Integrations

Two open-source components connect the educational site to real hardware:

Peak Shaver

The peak shaving algorithm solves demand charges - some utilities bill based on your highest single usage peak in a billing period. Peak Shaver watches consumption in real time and uses battery reserves to clip those peaks before they hit the meter. Twelve releases, refined through actual Oregon weather.

TOU Metering

The time-of-use metering plugin takes the Rate Calculator’s output and makes it live in Home Assistant - a Lovelace card that visualizes your rate schedule, current pricing tier, and the value of energy stored versus consumed. This is the bridge between “we know what our rates are” and “our house is acting on that knowledge.”

The Consulting Side

The information is free. If someone wants a second set of eyes on their system design, help with sizing, or someone to walk them through the permit process, that’s available as a paid service through Throughline. It’s not a sales funnel - it’s “we built this, we learned the hard way, here’s what we’d tell you.”

The Throughline

This project is where domain knowledge, systems thinking, and interactive tooling converge. The Rate Calculator is a data problem. The Energy Lab is a simulation problem. The Peak Shaver is an optimization problem. The Learn section is a communication problem. Each piece requires a different skill set, and they all feed each other. The rate data powers the energy model. The energy model informs the peak shaving strategy. The strategy runs on real hardware. The results become content for the site.

Current Status

Active across all fronts. The site content is comprehensive and growing. The Rate Calculator and Energy Lab are live. Both Home Assistant integrations are actively maintained. The peak shaver algorithm feeds into our own solar setup daily - the “Solarseed Peak Shaver Recalculate” button on our Home Assistant dashboard is probably the most-pressed button in our house.