COVID-19 ups urgency for NREL-led solar permitting software
The coronavirus pandemic has slowed down permitting for residential solar systems, leading to a renewed interest in an initiative led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Solar Foundation to develop automated permitting software that should speed the process at the local level.
The partners unveiled the Solar Automated Permit Processing, or SolarAPP, effort in 2018. Now they’re working on an expedited timeline to roll it out to a solar industry worried about declining installations and demand. Testing is expected to be completed in June 2020, according to the Solar Foundation website.
While the industry has always been eager to speed permitting and reduce soft costs, the difficulty of getting work done during the pandemic has prompted more jurisdictions to consider changing their traditional permitting processes, according to those involved with the SolarAPP effort.
“Change is not necessarily easy,” said Richard Lawrence, a program director at the Solar Foundation who heads that organization’s work on the SolarAPP. “This has forced some change.”
Solar in the U.S. is a long way from realizing its full potential. Direct and indirect costs of permitting, inspection and interconnection add about $7,000 ($1.00 per watt) to the cost of a typical residential solar energy system. That is about the same as the value of the 30% federal investment tax credit for solar, which began phasing out at the end of 2019. A patchwork of permitting and interconnection processes create installation and activation delays, increase cancellations and impose costs on solar installations that are far higher than in other mature solar markets.
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 public health crisis has led to even more urgency for a user-friendly, automated, and online platform to ease the process for permitting solar installations.
The SolarAPP will:
* Provide a flexible, web-based PV-permitting tool for residential systems at no-cost to AHJs.
* Enable standardization of instant permitting processes.
* Evaluate applications for safety and code compliance.
* Offer opportunities to incorporate energy storage and expand to other market segments.
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