The state of Vermont signed a wide-ranging renewable energy bill into law Wednesday that will soon introduce what may be the nation’s most streamlined process for getting small-scale solar installations up and running. Among myriad other provisions, the law eliminates the sort of permitting and inspection snarls that have long delayed, complicated and, some argue, arbitrarily increased the cost of small-scale residential and commercial solar projects — a problem that the solar industry and clean energy supporters face in dozens of states and jurisdictions across the country. “There is a fiscal and environmental urgency for Vermont to move off fossil fuels and toward sustainable sources of power,” Gov. Peter Shumlin.
In a nutshell, the new provision essentially eliminates permitting altogether and reduces most administrative headaches to a 10-day process or less. For a small-scale solar customer — a homeowner, business, a non-profit, school, municipality or any other entity interested in a solar array system up to 5 kilowatts in size — the process will soon entail completing a registration form and a certificate of compliance with grid connection requirements. The local utility then has 10 days to raise any issues. After that, the path is clear. The new registration process will go into effect beginning January, 2012. “If adopted beyond Vermont, simple registration for small solar installations could help solar businesses grow,” said David Blittersdorf, the president and chief executive of Williston, Vt., based solar manufacturer and installer AllEarth Renewables, in an email Thursday morning. Blittersdorf’s company worked with industry groups in the state to help legislators develop the streamlined solar registration concept.
For years, the residential solar industry and homeowners alike have complained bitterly about local permitting bottlenecks.Within a single service area, a solar installer or service company might well encounter dozens of different local ordinances, building and electric codes, zoning laws and permitting costs and idiosyncrasies that make estimating the final price tag — or installation timeline — for a solar system a nearly impossible affair. A study released in January by SunRun, a solar leasing company based in California, estimated that local permitting and inspection costs add roughly 50 cents per-watt, or about $2,500 to the cost of an average residential installation. The U.S. Department of Energy has also been developing various initiatives in concert with industry partners to tackle these sorts of non-technical, bureaucratic and administrative barriers to solar power expansion.
Solar Impulse Makes International Flight
