The ZIPs around Midlothian hold about 5,300 single-family lots of an acre or more.
It is the shortest drive of anywhere we serve — half an hour to downtown Dallas, a little over that to Fort Worth — which means a site visit here is cheap for us and quick for you.
Start with the name at the top of your electric bill.
Most of Midlothian is a deregulated address, which means you pick the company that bills you and Oncor owns the poles either way.
Get your bill out before you settle on a system size.
Oncor runs the lines into Midlothian and delivers every kilowatt hour, but it buys none of your surplus.
That is your retail provider's call, and since you can switch providers when the contract runs out, it is a number you can shop.
So the question that decides your array size is not one Oncor answers.
It is what your retail plan pays for an exported kilowatt hour, and those plans vary enough that it is worth checking the current ones before anyone sizes anything.
Every North Texas provider's terms are on one page: what each utility pays for exported solar
Midlothian issues a Building Solar System Permit, applied for through the city's online permit portal, and the contractor has to be registered with the city first — registration is free.
The city's published target is a review within 30 business days.
Outside the city limits, Ellis County is the other half of the question.
State law gives a Texas county no general power to demand a building permit for an ordinary house outside a city, so Ellis County sticks to septic, floodplain and platting.
That is not a free pass — septic setbacks and floodplain rules still reach a ground mount, and so does your utility's interconnection approval.
We pull whichever applies, and we fill in the half of the city's checklist that a ground mount actually answers.
Midlothian is rock country.
Of 107 points of the USDA soil survey on land within six miles of town, 64 percent reach bedrock inside three feet.
East of town it is 96 percent, and south of town 84.
The most common soil in the sample is Eddy, a thin gravelly clay loam the survey puts on rock about six inches down.
It covers about a quarter of the points on its own.
West of town is a different job.
None of the points on the west side hit shallow rock, and most of them are dark clay that swells and shrinks, so the piles go below the moving layer instead of into stone.
Everywhere else, a driven pile stops early and the trench is slow digging, so the foundation changes and it costs more.
That is a real number on the quote rather than a surprise later, which is why we check the soil map for your address first.
Face an array south at the thirty degree tilt we build and, at Midlothian's latitude, each kW installed makes about 1,532 kWh a year.
Run that on a 10 kW system and it is roughly 15,300 kWh a year.
Your own figure will move a little.
Which way your land faces moves it, and anything shading it moves it more than that.
The design tool runs your actual coordinates rather than a county figure.
Past that point, what your retail plan pays for the surplus starts to matter more than the panels do — which is why the utility question comes first on this page.
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
About seven in ten homes in Midlothian's ZIPs were built in 2000 or later, so an HOA is more likely here than not.
We have not found a Midlothian ordinance capping ground-mount height, which usually leaves the HOA as the binding constraint inside a subdivision and neither one on acreage outside it.
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.
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
The half of it that is about the roof — rafter size, roof covering, the letter saying your roof can carry the load — does not apply to an array standing on the ground.
What does apply is the site plan showing where everything sits, the electrical plans, the engineer-sealed structural letter for the foundation, and the specification sheets for the racking.
We submit that set.
No building permit from the county.
Ellis County has no general authority over an ordinary house outside a city, and it keeps to septic, floodplain and platting.
Those rules and your utility's interconnection approval still apply, so being outside the city removes one office, not all of them.
Whoever bills you, not Oncor.
Oncor delivers the power and owns the meter; the buyback is a line in your retail plan, and it is worth reading before you settle on a size.
If your address turns out to be on a cooperative rather than a retail provider, the terms are different again.
We check which one you are on before we quote.
In most cases yes, and it costs more.
Close to two in three soil survey points around Midlothian have bedrock inside three feet, and east of town nearly all of them do, so this is a real question here rather than a hypothetical one.
Rock near the surface stops a driven pile early, the foundation changes and the trench gets harder — that is a line on the quote, not a surprise later.
The towns nearest yours with a page of their own.
No salesman. No home visit to get a number.
