Regional Approaches to Reducing Solar Red Tape

Last week Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released their annual Tracking the Sun report on the cost of going solar across the U.S. The research team found that solar’s price tag has never been lower, and the most significant opportunity for continued price reduction has nothing to do with panels – it’s all about non-hardware “soft” costs like local permitting.

Just like any other home improvement project, going solar first requires the home to get a building permit from their city or county. More than 18,000 municipalities in the U.S. set their own requirements for this solar permitting process – which leaves us with a patchwork of varying requirements that is one giant headache for solar installers. Long waits, high fees, excessive inspections, avoidable paperwork and non-standard practices across different jurisdictions can all add unnecessary costs to what should be a simple, transparent process.

Vote Solar’s Project Permit tackles this issue head on by providing resources to citizens – like you – to help simplify solar permitting in your towns. On Project Permit you can see how your community measures up to best practices on our interactive solar permitting map. And if it’s lagging, put our local advocacy toolkit to work by calling on your mayor for action!

As part of our Project Permit work we encourage cities to work together to simplify and streamline the permitting process at a region level so there’s less crazy-making variability between neighbors. Here are two such regional efforts that are setting a great example for others to follow:

New York:

As part of Governor Cuomo’s NY-Sun Initiative to ramp up solar development and drive down solar costs, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) collaborated with various partners across the state to adopt a Unified Solar Permit, which draws from Solar ABCs best practices and other guidelines.

The standardized form, that all 1,600 municipalities in New York can use, includes permitting guidelines for municipalities to use that match up to many best practices from Project Permit, including:

• A straightforward online checklist that lets users know whether their projects are eligible, and a simple process for listing a system’s technical specifications.

• A suggested reasonable, flat fee of $150 for application processing.

• A suggested fast turn around time of 14 days or less (Note: Project Permit best practice is either an over-the counter processing option as the ideal, but credit is given for processing time of 3 days or under. Given that many jurisdictions can take months to process a permit, we think that two weeks is moving in the right direction).

• A suggestion to eliminate excessive inspections. They are suggesting that only a single inspection be required.

NYSERDA will be offering a small financial incentive to encourage municipalities across New York to transition to this standardized approach. And if that’s not enough of a carrot: if New York municipalities adopt the standardized form and follow the recommended guidelines they are almost assured to earn a “best” score in Project Permit.

Northern California:

Cities in the East Bay of Northern California are also making serious strides towards a uniform, regional approach to simplified solar permitting. Just this month, nines cities approved the East Bay’s Green Corridor’s “Rapid PV Permit” for single-family residential installations. Like the New York process, many of the recommended guidelines emerging from this regional effort meet best practices in Project Permit, including:

• A straightforward online checklist that lets users know exactly what will be required during the permitting process.Standard forms are also posted online, including a Rapid PV Permit, Solar PV Standard Plan, and the Green Corridor’s innovative structural engineering guidelines.

• A suggested reasonable fee not to exceed the cost of staff time to issue the permit (we hope this will match up to our best practice of a flat fee under $400, but that remains to be seen).

• A fast turn around time of either over the counter processing, or a goal of week turn around time or less.

• Online Processing should soon be available in many of the nine cities.

Vote Solar is a non-profit grassroots organization working to fight climate change and foster economic opportunity by bringing solar energy into the mainstream.