This is your SolarWakeup for April 1st, 2020

Market Data. Yesterday I joined Roth capital to talk about the survey results, which you can see for yourself by going here after you participate. I am glad to see that this platform has been helpful to others in making business decisions, moving forward with their business plans and getting through the pandemic. We will do this again in a few weeks, with the intention to track the depth and duration of the slowdown as governments continue to work through their local plans. Please pass the survey along your network and it is important to participate each week, I promise we will stop doing this when we are back to normal. Link

SolarAPP Is Rolling. I caught up with Birchy from OpenSolar (ex Sungevity CEO), who’s been championing SolarAPP for the past 2 years, as the solution to reduce solar costs in the US.  Following up from my editorial on Friday that we need SolarAPP faster given that many solar jobs are on hold or stalled, Birchy shared some positive news.  Work started last week to accelerate the deployment of SolarAPP as a response to COVID driven restrictions in permit approvals.  The SolarAPP consortium is going to expand the pilot to many more communities than planned, to provide a solution for AHJs to approve solar system permits without office based processing.  If systems are installed by accredited installers using certified systems and installing to code, they would be eligible for automated permitting, subject to spot-checking and quality assurance by the AHJ.  In the near-term emails and video call efforts are still necessary to keep projects moving, but the automated permitting tool will be released in beta as a solution for AHJs to grant permits of solar systems in the next few months – and this will be the new nationwide ‘best-practice’ process created by NREL in consultation with the code and safety organizations representing key stakeholders.  NREL has just launched the new solarAPP web page and I encourage you to sign up to stay in touch for this key initiative.  You can stay informed about progress of this project, and register for an up-coming webinar that will discuss how communities can get involved in testing.  Solar installers should encourage their AHJs to attend the webinar as well.  This could be a real solution that can address a critical COVID response needed over the coming months, but also be a path to solving the bigger cost reductions achieved in all other international markets where residential solar installs at under $1.50/W largely due to non-existent soft costs.

No-Touch In The Meantime. I am excited and wish that SolarAPP would happen overnight but in the meantime let us help our State associations with information and outreach to AHJs. If you are in California, you can check out the CALSSA AHJ database on their current status, update it if you find different information and educate your teams on this. Then you should participate in and ask your building department contacts to join in a webinar on how building departments can enable no-touch permitting and remote inspections.

Tracking Current Permits. It is also time to see this week’s update on permit issuance for solar from across the Country. While the SolarWakeup survey tracks sentiment, sales and business strategy, our friends at Ohm Analytics are doing amazing work (temporarily for free) on showing you permits in major metros. Here’s my takeaway, building departments are either dipping to zero or close to it but then bouncing back, which tells me that they are creating a new process for processing the backlog. I’ll be watching to see what stays at zero and how close to the former average it bounces back to.

Payroll Protection. In case you were looking for it, SBA released the draft application for the payroll protection program.

Last Word. And now some bittersweet news. Next week will be the last week for the SolarWakeup daily newsletter, at least in this format. After 8 years, I have finally been tapped for a work assignment that doesn’t allow me to continue on. It is with great pleasure that I want to tell you that I’ve been nominated to join the Florida Public Service Commission (PSC) as its newest commissioner. More on this soon and I hope you will join me in thanking the community we’ve built together over almost 3,000 newsletters. 

Opinion

Best, Yann