Solar Design Services in Texas

Proposal design for the sales stage, permit plan sets for Texas authorities, 3D pre-design and shade studies, detailed engineering for rooftop and ground mount, civil and structural engineering with STAAD Pro verification, and yield and technical reports. Most Texas installers start with one service and expand once turnaround and quality are proven.

Yes, and it is the substance of the work rather than a claim. Texas has no single statewide solar permitting process. Code adoption and enforcement sit with municipalities and counties, and there are 254 counties. Two projects an hour apart can face different adopted code cycles, different submittal formats, and different inspection expectations.

Oncor Electric Delivery, CenterPoint Energy, AEP Texas, Austin Energy, CPS Energy. Each expects its own diagram format and documentation, and export rules differ between them, which changes both the sizing case and what the drawings must show.

Texas has grown into one of the largest solar markets in the country across residential, commercial and utility scale, but it is administratively the most fragmented. The deregulated retail market means export compensation is set by the customer retail provider rather than the wires utility, so the same array earns differently depending on a contract the installer does not control. For design partners, the real work is tracking 254 counties worth of local practice rather than one state rulebook.

Yes. Commercial and industrial work brings structural calculations, equipment coordination and interconnection complexity. Our largest documented project is an 11 MW DC rooftop installation on tin shed structures, which required structural verification across dozens of shed roofs alongside the electrical design.

A second engineer reviews every set against a jurisdiction specific checklist before it leaves us. The reviewer is not the person who drew it, because the fastest way to miss a setback error is to check your own work. Structural output is verified in STAAD Pro rather than assumed from a racking table.

You do. Work is covered by NDA and all intellectual property in the deliverables transfers to you. We do not reuse your drawings, your customer data or your templates for anyone else.

Yes. No retainer, no minimum volume, no onboarding fee. Most clients send one project, check the output, then scale.

Wind: wide range. Inland design speeds are moderate, but the Gulf coast runs high and designated catastrophe counties require windstorm certification. Snow: minimal across most of the state, with light ground snow loads in the panhandle. Seismic: low across almost all of Texas. Also governing: hail is a material design and insurance consideration through north Texas, and extreme summer ambient temperatures drive conductor derating. These decide the racking selection and attachment schedule, so we verify them per site rather than applying a regional default.

Municipal code adoption varies widely, with no uniform statewide cycle. Windstorm certification requirements in designated coastal catastrophe counties. Municipal utility jurisdictions such as Austin Energy and CPS Energy set their own interconnection terms. We work from these rather than a national template, because each can produce a review comment on an otherwise sound design.

Houston Permitting Center (City of Houston): large-volume electronic submittal operation. Expects its own sheet conventions and reviews solar as an electrical permit with structural attachments. Dallas Development Services (City of Dallas): separate building and electrical review tracks, so incomplete structural documentation stalls the whole package rather than one part of it. Austin Development Services Department (City of Austin): coordinates with Austin Energy on interconnection alongside the building permit, so the utility paperwork and permit run in parallel. San Antonio Development Services (City of San Antonio): works alongside CPS Energy programme requirements, which are distinct from the investor-owned utility model elsewhere in the state. Unincorporated county jurisdictions (Much of rural Texas): many counties have limited or no building permit requirement for solar, which shifts the compliance burden onto the utility interconnection review instead.

Not as a statewide requirement. Texas is a deregulated retail market, so the wires utility such as Oncor or CenterPoint delivers power while the customer retail electric provider sets any solar buyback plan. Two identical arrays on the same street can earn different export credit because the owners chose different providers. Municipal utilities like Austin Energy and CPS Energy sit outside this and run their own programmes.

Designated coastal catastrophe counties require certification that construction meets windstorm standards, which is a documentation and inspection stream separate from the building permit. It applies to solar attachments on the seaward counties and does not exist for inland projects, so a set drawn for a Dallas roof is not a set that works on the Gulf coast.