TL;DR
Permission to operate is the utility's formal authorization to energize a completed solar or battery system, issued after the installation passes electrical inspection and the interconnection paperwork — including the new or reprogrammed meter — is processed. Until it arrives the system must stay off, and the wait, ranging from days to several weeks depending on the utility, is the last and least controllable stage of a solar project.
What it means
Permission to operate is the utility's formal authorization to energize a completed solar or battery system, issued after the installation passes electrical inspection and the interconnection paperwork — including the new or reprogrammed meter — is processed. Until it arrives the system must stay off, and the wait, ranging from days to several weeks depending on the utility, is the last and least controllable stage of a solar project. Financing payments sometimes begin before it, a contract detail worth checking.
Where it sits in the glossary
Permission to operate is part of the Trade jargon group inside the ProFix Directory glossary. Browse every term in this category from the glossary index.
Why Ohio homeowners should know it
This is a term Ohio homeowners encounter when reading contractor quotes, hiring paperwork, or inspection reports. Understanding it well enough to ask one good follow-up question is usually all the protection a homeowner needs.
ProFix Directory keeps definitions short on the index page and saves the longer context — Ohio-specific rules, where the term comes from, and which ProFix tools touch it — for these per-term pages so the term is easy to cite and easy to share.
ProFix tools that touch this term
See also
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