The ZIPs around Lucas hold about 4,600 single-family lots of an acre or more, on some of the largest residential parcels in Collin County.
It is also the only city we work in that will step out of the permit process altogether under the right conditions.
Check your electric bill before anything else.
Around Lucas that is usually Grayson-Collin Electric Cooperative, and if it is, you are in the small minority of Texans whose exported power is still worth what imported power costs.
On GCEC lines you cannot shop for a provider, and in exchange you get kilowatt-hour netting at the full retail rate — almost nobody in Texas still offers it.
Every unit you send back takes a unit off your bill whether you used it or not, and what you do not use is banked for the following month.
Going solar moves you onto the co-op's distributed generation rate, and that carries a $40 monthly base charge where the ordinary residential rate carries $25.
There is a one-time $40 application fee, billed after the net meter is set.
The co-op is also clear that you will still get a bill: the $40 minimum stands even in a month you over-generate.
Retail netting changes the ceiling.
A bigger array keeps its full value instead of dropping to an export rate, and the monthly cost of the distributed generation rate is the same whatever size you build — so on GCEC lines the limit is your land and your budget, not your own consumption.
Where the lines are Oncor's you pick the company that bills you.
Oncor delivers the power and does not buy any of it back; your retail provider sets the buyback, and the terms are worth reading before anyone sizes anything.
Every North Texas provider's terms are on one page: what each utility pays for exported solar
Lucas publishes something no other city here does: a permit is only required if a third-party inspector is not used.
Use one and the city steps back; do not, and the city inspects and the permit is required.
That is the state's third-party review route written into a city's own policy rather than buried in a statute, and it is the difference between one queue and none.
Read the rule closely, though — as published it says solar roofing, and a ground mount is not a roof.
We confirm how the building department applies it to a ground mount before we file anything, rather than assuming the roof wording carries over.
Past the city limits there is no county permit to pull: Texas counties have no general authority over ordinary single-family construction, and Collin County publishes no permit that reaches a residential array.
Septic setbacks, floodplain rules and the co-op's interconnection approval still apply.
We take whichever route is faster for your address and we tell you which one we took.
Lucas is 91 percent dark clay, and nearly all of its rock is on the north side.
One in five of the points north of town reaches bedrock inside three feet; to the south, east and west it is close to none.
That comes from 97 points of the USDA soil survey on land within six miles of the city.
Houston Black clay by itself covers close to six in ten.
Blackland clay moves with the weather.
It swells when it is wet and shrinks when it is not, and that seasonal walk is what rotates a shallow foundation off where it started — small movements, but a row of panels is sensitive to differential ones.
So the foundation reaches below the zone that moves rather than sitting in it.
That is a design decision taken from the soil map for your parcel, and on the bigger Lucas lots there is usually more than one place to take it.
A south-facing array at the thirty degree tilt we build makes about 1,532 kWh a year for every kW installed at Lucas's latitude.
A 10 kW array comes to roughly 15,300 kWh a year.
Points a few miles apart around the city came back between 1,494 and 1,550, so treat any single town figure as a starting point.
The design tool runs your own coordinates instead.
On GCEC lines that whole number is worth the retail rate, which is why an array here is often sized to the land rather than to the bill.
Texas law stops an HOA banning solar outright, but lets it keep a ground mount inside a fenced yard and no taller than the fence. What an HOA can and cannot do
Lucas is a large-lot city with an unusual mix: about half the houses in these ZIPs were built this century, and the older acreage is often unrestricted.
Where there is an association it is the binding constraint, because we have not found a Lucas ordinance capping ground-mount height.
Where a fence line does govern, we bring the tilt down on the same frame until the array fits under it — about fourteen degrees puts four modules below six feet.
On an unrestricted acre neither rule bites and the array sits where the sun is.
No holes in your roof, panels aimed south instead of wherever the house faces, and room to add panels when the load grows. Ground mount vs rooftop
Maybe not, and it depends on a detail worth knowing.
The city's published rule is that a permit is only required if a third-party inspector is not used — but the rule as written says solar roofing, and a ground mount is not on a roof.
So we ask the building department how they apply it to your job before filing, and tell you which route it is taking.
We do not assume the roof wording covers you.
On Grayson-Collin lines, yes — kilowatt-hour netting at the full retail rate, with unused kilowatt hours banked for the next month.
It is one of the last true netting arrangements in Texas.
The catch is the rate you move onto: a $40 monthly base charge instead of $25, and a $40 minimum bill even in a month you over-generate.
It is the one place in our footprint where the answer is often yes.
Retail netting means the extra production keeps its full value rather than dropping to an export rate, and the monthly cost of the distributed generation rate does not change with system size.
What limits it is your land, your budget and the co-op's own interconnection rules.
Four hundred to six hundred square feet for a normal house, which on a Lucas lot is a corner of it.
The real constraint is how far the array sits from your meter, because the trench between them is priced by the foot — and on these lot sizes that run can be long.
The towns nearest yours with a page of their own.
No salesman. No home visit to get a number.
