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I hired a licensed solar installer to do my solar installs (Phase I was a small installation to make sure it worked like expected, Phase II was the additions made after having Phase I for a year). I hired a licensed HVAC to install the variable speed heat pump in place of the old AC (I highly recommend that if you live in the south). And a licensed plumber to replace my old gas water heater with a hybrid water heater that has a built-in heat pump. And a licensed electrician to install the charging circuits.

About the only thing I did myself was run the ducts to and from the water heater. I duct in from the attic so the water heater's heat pump intake takes in warm air to improve the water heater's efficiency when it heat's the water tank (it doesn't have to run as long while it's consuming only 380W of power). And during the warm half of the year when I'm trying to cool the home, I duct the water heater's cold air by-product into my home HVAC's air intake (so that my home variable speed heat pump can stay in low power mode a couple hours longer each day because some of the air it takes in is already cooled by the water heater's heat pump).

If you're better with your hands than me you'd probably save more on labor than I did. Without my math nerd number crunching as a software engineer (most of my work was on the back-end data side), if I had used only normal folks' math I might be getting only 70% free power instead of 80% free power. But if you're more of a hands on worker and don't have the math nerd, your saving on some of the labor might make your initial costs low enough that your payback time period is shorter than mine.