Making it easier to put up rooftop solar
“Technically legal, hard to get rooftop solar”
“Technically legal, hard to get” perfectly describes rooftop solar in America.
That’s how Dustin Cote, the writer behind Sustainable Advantages, summed up his experience putting solar panels on his home in North Carolina. His reflection on the experience is worth reading in full, but here are the five chapters:
Cote dreams of becoming a rooftop solar hero.
His Homeowners Association (HOA) plays the villain and blocks his ambitions.
Solar installers tell him that he is on his own.
Neighborhood irony: One of his neighbors already has prominent solar panels.
Cote is victorious only after hiring a law firm to fight the HOA.
Whatever you think about rooftop solar’s potential for reducing carbon emissions or saving money on your bill, the process should be straightforward. Needing to hire a lawyer is a sign of a broken system.
Cote’s story reflects a deeper problem in US rooftop solar markets. It turns out that a significant portion of rooftop solar costs are “soft costs” rather than the costs of the panels themselves. For example, soft costs include complying with local rules and regulations. This is basically all the red tape involved with getting a rooftop installation permitted. An industry association for solar estimates that $2 out of every $3 spent on installing rooftop solar are spent on soft costs. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s research suggests the same.
What can cities and states do about these soft costs? They can take two steps: improving permitting to deliver approvals in 24 hours and encouraging new communities to be solar-friendly.
Permitting within 24 hours
One easy fix is simplifying the permitting process. The goal should be for people to have their panels approved in 24 hours or less. This is the experience for elsewhere in the world. Installation costs in the US are far higher than in comparable countries like Australia, for example.
Robinson Meyer and Jesse Jenkins recently interviewed Sunrun’s Chief Executive Officer, Mary Powell, about unlocking “super cheap rooftop solar.” Powell pointed to the National Renewable Energy Lab’s SolarAPP+, which is meant to simplify the process. Local governments essentially agree to use SolarAPP+ as their permitting application. From there, SolarAPP+ automates the approval process. That’s a good idea, but it has reached only around 200 communities. The program has been around for three years and should be more widely adopted.
There’s good reason to think that this kind of streamlining works. Permit Power, a nonprofit that promotes SolarAPP+, has a short case study comparing two parts of Arizona that adopted the system to the rest of the state. Pima County and Tucson have seen dramatically faster rooftop solar growth than other areas in Arizona.
Automated permitting through SolarAPP+ is a win-win. Rooftop solar installations become easier, and costs fall for the homeowner and the local government. Your city could be more efficient and unlock new technologies with faster permitting. According to Permit Power, distributed solar is just the start–heat pumps, batteries, and even electric vehicle chargers can all benefit.
Whether or not they use SolarAPP+, states and cities should streamline their processes for adding rooftop solar. Inspections should be quick. Otherwise, rooftop solar will be a victim of red tape—killed by a thousand cuts.
How does an HOA get its rules?
Another fix would be for HOAs to make their base rules solar-friendly. Cote shouldn’t have had to hire a law firm. He should simply have been able to install the panels. So the question should be, how does an HOA get its rules?
Most builders and developers select the rules that an HOA enforces—or at least, developers create the governing board. They should start with solar-friendly codes.
Poor rules are a looming demographic problem for rooftop solar installers and their potential customers. Michael Pollack, a law professor at Cardozo, points out in a 2017 paper on HOAs that 8 out of 10 new homes fall within an HOA. That number varies annually, but the 2023 number is similar according to the Foundation for Community Association Research–2 out of 3 new homes were in a community association. The US Census data mirrors this–most new single-family homes are included in an HOA. Without improvements to HOA rules, many new rooftops could be prevented from adding solar panels because of thoughtless regulation.
To this end, the Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) could create model language for these efforts. Then, they could go to builders and developers and get them to adopt them as best practices. Getting HOAs set up from the start would go a long way to ensuring new developments allow solar.
Currently, SEIA only has a webpage devoted to solar access rights that directs readers off its website. They have a consumer guide, but it 404s. Solar United Neighbors appears to have some guides for different states.
Given that Cote won his contest with the HOA, there’s room for improvement and more action. He is reluctant to endorse solar installers and advocacy groups hiring “lawyers to battle HOAs.” But it seems like a winning proposition. He won, after all! For others in North Carolina with Cote, his lawyers already wrote a useful script to follow. At the end of his reflection is a redacted version of his lawyers' letter to his HOA. That is a great starting point for would-be solar homeowners.
It’s unlikely, but the Community Associations Institute, an international association of HOAs, could also adopt solar-friendly model language. From my brief survey of their rooftop solar efforts, most of their lobbying has gone towards ensuring that they can control how and where solar is installed.
Putting up guard rails protecting would-be solar owners via state legislatures is also valuable. As I wrote about before, Texas passed rules limiting how HOAs can respond to a homeowner installing solar. It doesn’t remove all of an HOA's influence on location and design, but it gives homeowners teeth to fight back if they are denied, as Cote was. These laws will make more and more sense as the proportion of homes subject to HOA rules grows.
State-level action makes a lot of sense here. There isn’t much reason to expect reprisals from citizens for state action limiting HOAs–HOAs simply aren’t popular with their residents or the average homeowner. Two out of three Americans say that they’d prefer to live outside of an HOA. Even of homeowners already living within an HOA, only 1 in 3 say that’s what they want, and half say they’d prefer not to.
Rooftop solar should be easy, so why is it hard?
Much of the opposition to residential solar likely reflects debates about how much to pay installation owners for the electricity that they push into the wider grid. Utilities are worried about being left with the bill for providing a grid connection and other fixed costs for upkeep. Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at Berkeley, has beaten this drum for more than a decade. In areas where this is an ongoing debate, which is most of the country, a palatable compromise might be easier permitting for better pricing rules.
You should be able to permit your rooftop solar from your phone, and your neighbors shouldn’t be able to stop you. The permitting process should be quick and responsive. In short, the opposite of “technically legal, hard to get,” as Cote experienced.
Cities, states, and HOAs should facilitate rooftop solar by streamlining permitting. Expanding the use of SolarAPP+ from the approximately 200 jurisdictions using it to thousands of others would go a long way toward clearing a path for homeowners wanting to install solar.