One Online Application to Eliminate Mistakes and Cover All Jurisdictions

The primary goal of the SunShot program is to make solar energy cost-competitive with other forms of electricity by the end of the decade.

To achieve this, a roadmap has been established which calls for (among other things) a substantial reduction in the non-hardware costs of installing residential solar.

Among these “soft” costs are those associated with “Permitting, Inspection and Interconnection” (PII): a small, but significant, contribution to the overall cost of home solar projects.

Estimates vary: SunRun asserted that “Local permitting and inspection add $0.50 per watt, or $2,516 per residential install”, whereas an earlier report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) (both reports are years old) stated “PII labor costs total $0.11/W for residential PV systems…An assumed average permitting fee of $430 adds $0.09/W…for a total of $0.20/W”.

Essentially, because permitting processes are so different from place to place and often involve several agencies within each jurisdiction, installers (especially those operating in a new market) are often unclear on what paperwork is required, how it needs to be filled out, and where to submit it.

Moreover, Clean Power Finance found that 36% of installers currently limit or avoid sales efforts in otherwise viable markets due to cumbersome permitting processes.

However, if Sun Shot’s goal of $1 per installed watt is to be met, and assuming each category of soft cost is to be reduced in proportion to its present share of the total, these PII costs must be reduced from $0.20/W to $0.04/W.

Five areas have been advanced as ‘Cost Reduction Opportunities’ (CROs) for PII: standardization of requirements, increased transparency of the permitting process in each jurisdiction, implementation of online permitting applications for each jurisdiction, reducing permitting fees, and streamlining of the interconnection process.

There are currently initiatives underway in each of these areas. A preeminent example is the Solar America Board for Codes and Standards (Solar ABCs), which seeks to standardize the permitting process across jurisdiction by (among other things) providing boilerplate forms and diagrams.

SunShot provided funding for Clean Power Finance to establish the National Solar Permitting Database (NSPD) which increases transparency by providing a platform for installers and AHJs to share information about permitting processes.

Vote Solar’s Project Permit uses the data in the NSPD to rate the permitting process of each AHJ and identify areas for improvement. SunShot has also provided funding for Simply Civic to develop online application processes for jurisdictions.

Despite these excellent projects, analysis by the NREL predicts that achieving the $0.04 PII target will require some hitherto undefined CRO capable of reducing PII by an additional $0.10 per watt after Standardization, Transparency, Online Permitting, Lower Fees and expedited interconnection are accounted for.

Part of the reason is that these are “piecemeal” solutions which rely on AHJs reforming individually. We need a holistic (preferably nation-wide) solution for managing permits.