California was the first state to mandate a standardized process for solar permits, and now it has the how-to guide to prove it.
Available now from the Center for Sustainable Energy (CSE), the California Solar Permitting Guidebook (PDF) is positioned as a manual for improving permitting review and approval for the small solar systems that make up our inevitable distributed generation future.
Born as Assembly Bill 2188 and signed into law by governor Jerry Brown, CSE’s guidebook aims to bring solar paragon California into compliance with its renewable portfolio standard requiring that one-third of the state’s electricity comes from clean energy by 2020.
By wiping out out the annoying permitting gridlock, perhaps CSE’s guidebook will get us beyond California’s exacting national standard before then.
“California leads the nation in rooftop solar installations, but achieving the state’s ambitious goals for renewable energy will require even greater solar adoption, and the permitting process has been a major barrier,” CSE senior project manager Tamara Gishri-Perry explained in the guidebook’s holiday rollout. Cleaning up the bureaucracy gumming up what Gishri-Perry called “typically fairly simple home rooftop solar installations,” CSE’s guidebook breaks down solar permitting law, process and resources for residential rooftops and other small systems. It does not apply to the zoning, land-use and environmental concerns of larger installations, so those installing systems larger than 10-30 kilowatts will need to look elsewhere for clarity.
But residential rooftop bureaucrats, installers and customers now have a single sourcebook decisively stating solar system layouts, number of inspections, permit fee caps and other essential shared knowledge that puts everyone on the same page, and playing field, which in turn could kick state installations into overdrive. Next year’s edition promises to add a toolkit for expedited solar thermal installations, but as it is, CSE’s manual still boasts enough structural criteria, inspection guides, plans and forms to help solarize every residential rooftop in California.
Beyond its best-practices guidebook, CSE is also offering free technical assistance to local government agencies looking to accelerate the process. Attacking bloated solar soft costs has been part of CSE’s mission, from its rooftop solar challenge, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, to recent reports on making solar financing more efficient and less expensive. This handy permitting guidebook fits in nicely alongside those reports, all of which puts California well ahead of the rest of America’s for clean energy performance.
This article appeared at Solar Energy