A web application can quickly take system specifications and verify whether it complies with local laws.
Saving Time and Money
Government agencies can develop programs to help reduce administrative red tape through automation. The answer is “yes,” according to promising results achieved by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), which saved thousands of hours of work for local governments by creating a tool called SolarAPP+ (Solar Automated Permit Processing Plus) for residential solar permits.
“We estimate that the automated SolarAPP+ application saved about 9,900 hours of staff time in 2022,” wrote the NREL team in its report “SolarAPP+ Performance Review (2022 Data).” “Based on median timelines, a typical SolarAPP+ project is permitted and inspected on average 13 business days faster than traditional projects… SolarAPP+ has eliminated more than 134,000 days of permitting-related delays.”
Compliance Verification and Time and Money Savings
SolarAPP+ performs over 100 compliance checks in the permitting process that are typically the responsibility of city or municipal staff, according to Jeff Cook, SolarAPP+ program lead at NREL and lead author of the report. It can be more accurate, comprehensive, and efficient than a government employee pressed for time. The cost of permits depends on the details of the project.
“We knew that the amount of solar energy being installed on roofs was increasing across the country,” said Cook. “It took us 20 years to reach one million solar panel installations. I believe we reached two million solar panel installations in just a few years. So, there is a lot of solar energy available. The issue is that each of these systems needs a compliance review with the laws. So if you need a person to review that, you have a million applications.”
“When regulations make it unnecessarily difficult for people to install solar and storage systems quickly, it hurts everyone,” said Senator Scott Wiener (Democrat from California) in a press statement. “It hurts those who want to install solar. It hurts communities across California that are adversely affected by climate change. We need to make it easier for people to use renewable energy – that is clear. Accelerating solar permit approvals is something we can do to make this a reality.”
Stakeholder Collaboration
A coalition of stakeholders from the solar energy industry, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the building code development community requested NREL to develop the program, according to Cook. The represented organizations included UL Solutions and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council. (UL Solutions is a company that addresses a wide range of safety issues; initially, it focused on fire and electrical safety.)
“What we discovered was the community need for the program and we found there was a gap in the private sector,” said Cook. “There was no incentive to do this from any active private sector members, but there is a real opportunity or value for the public good if such a program exists and is available to the public and free for local governments to adopt.”
Accelerating the Approval Process
Cook estimates that it required hundreds of thousands of hours of plan review to manually approve all residential solar permits in the United States in recent years. Local government staff take about 15 minutes to an hour to approve a permit for a residential solar project, and about 30 percent of applications are modified afterward.
“It overwhelms staff with the work they need to do,” said Cook.
“We saw about 750 residential applications over the past 12 months, which is about double the number of applications we saw two years ago,” said Kate Gallego, mayor of Phoenix, during the SolarAPP+ discussion session. “When I ask people in the industry what we can do to accelerate solar deployment, they ask: ‘Can you speed up the permitting process?’ We take about 30 days now. We want to get permits as quickly as possible, but we don’t want to sacrifice safety, and we want to ensure that we are not just doing it quickly, but doing it well. That is why this collaboration has been very appealing to me.”
Up to five separate departments review the permits – those overseeing structural, electrical, fire, planning, and regulatory decisions, according to Cook.
“There’s usually a backlog,” Cook said. “Just because the authority takes 15 minutes to review doesn’t mean you send it to them today – they review it after an hour and get back to you. The average across the country is seven days for processing, but it can be more than 30 days. It really varies across the country depending on the solar capacity in that area.”
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