Tell your state leaders to fight for instant rooftop solar permitting!

The landmark new report “As Cheap as our Peers” calculates that the median cost to install a 7-kW rooftop solar system in the United States is $28,000, compared to $10,000 in Germany and just $4,000 in Australia. The red tape labyrinth of permitting barriers, generally at the state, municipal, and electric utility level, has driven U.S. home electrification costs sky-high, with these procedural “soft costs” now accounting for 78% of the U.S. rooftop solar price!

That also means there’s an immense opportunity to kickstart growth and empower households to build their own clean energy abundance with no-cost legal and regulatory changes. The same report projects that if the U.S. rooftop solar hit Australian or German prices, 18.2 million more families would install solar by 2040 for savings of $1.2 trillion!

There are a multitude of simple and easy policy options on the table to make it easier to install rooftop solar: instant permitting software, automated utility interconnection approvals for systems with smart inverters, or at least allowing code compliance to be verified with remote videos or photos instead of requiring in-person inspection.

New Jersey’s state legislature recently passed a state-level instant solar permitting law that could be a model for the nation. It will create a 24/7 automated online State Smart Solar Permitting Platform, which should cut the solar-installation-permit wait time for homeowners from weeks or months down to hours or even minutes!

The free NREL-developed SolarApp+ software is built to empower local governments with a ready-to-go instant solar permitting process, and it’s already used by over 160 U.S. cities and counties. There’s extensive walkthroughs and signup assistance at the gosolarapp.org website.

Automated, online, and super-fast smart permitting for home solar is a brilliant model to bring clean energy abundance to the nation. Every state should pass a smart solar permitting bill like New Jersey’s A5264, encourage and support their cities, towns, and counties to adopt SolarApp+, and make this happen as soon as possible!

Tell your state leaders to fight for instant rooftop solar permitting!