Four steps, all of them your contractor's to take
The sequence is specific. Your contractor must submit plans to the City's Development Services Division. When City staff approve the plans, the contractor is given a City Building Permit. The contractor must then apply to the City for an Electrical Permit for the installation.
After receiving both permits, the contractor is responsible for contacting Development Services to schedule the electrical inspection, and must schedule with the City for a final building inspection and approval. Four discrete steps, each of which can sit waiting without anyone telling you.
This is why a vague progress report is worth pushing back on. Rather than asking whether the permit is in, ask which of those four steps is complete and on what date. An installer actively working your project can answer immediately, and one who cannot is telling you something.
The city is reachable if you want to confirm independently. Development Services' electrical inspections office can be reached on 336-373-2459. You are entitled to know the status of work on your own house, and a short call is a reasonable thing to make when answers stop arriving.
The state inspection procedure your contractor has to follow
Throughout the installation the contractor must adhere to the North Carolina Department of Insurance inspection procedures for residential rooftop solar installations and approved electrical schematics. That is not a Greensboro-specific rule, it is the statewide procedure, and Greensboro says explicitly that it applies to your job.
Part of that procedure decides whether you need an engineer. A North Carolina registered design professional must seal the structural design when the weight of the PV system exceeds three pounds per square foot, when the roof has more than one layer of asphalt shingles, when the roofing material is of a type other than asphalt shingles or metal, or when the roof is located in a 140 mph or greater wind zone.
Two of those triggers are things you can establish before quoting: how many layers of shingles your roof carries, and what the covering is made of. If either applies, a sealed structural design is a cost that belongs in every quote you compare, and a quote that omits it is not cheaper, it is incomplete.
Ask each installer directly whether a sealed structural design is included and, if it is, whose seal. Ask them to itemise it separately so that two quotes can be compared on the same basis rather than as two single numbers.
The decisions that set your output
Orientation is the choice that most affects production and it cannot be recovered later with better equipment. A south-facing unshaded plane produces the most, east and west planes produce usefully but give up output, and a north plane rarely repays the hardware.
Shading costs more than people expect because it removes production in the middle of the day when the array is otherwise at its strongest. Under time-differentiated utility rates the timing of that lost production matters as well as the quantity, so ask for a shading assessment covering the full year rather than the hour of the site visit.
Check the roof covering's age and condition before anything is ordered. Panels outlast most coverings, so one within a few years of replacement should be replaced first rather than paying later to remove and reinstall the array.
Get the answers in writing alongside the production estimate. An estimate that assumes an unshaded south plane on a roof that has neither is a forecast you will spend years failing to meet.
Two changes that a stale quote will miss
Greensboro is served by Duke Energy, and Duke Energy no longer offers legacy flat retail net metering to new residential solar customers. New customers are placed on time-differentiated net-metering or bridge rate options, so what your generation is worth depends on when it happens rather than only on how much of it there is.
One caution worth carrying beyond the city limits: North Carolina has 76 municipally-owned electric utilities, and municipal providers and Electric Membership Cooperatives are not regulated by the North Carolina Utilities Commission. Nearby High Point runs its own system on entirely different terms, so advice from a friend a short drive away may be describing a different utility altogether. Read the name on your own bill.
The federal position has also changed. The 30 percent residential tax credit under Section 25D applied through December 31, 2025 and is not available for a purchased home system placed in service after that date. Ask any installer to rebuild the arithmetic without it, using the rate option you will actually be on.
If you take a lease or a power purchase agreement rather than buying, the provider may claim the business version of the credit under Section 48E and reflect part of that value in the rate offered, so ask what they claim and what reaches you and confirm with a tax advisor. North Carolina's property tax exclusion for most of the added assessed value of a residential solar system still applies and needs no application.