Becca Jones-Albertus:
Good afternoon and welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us here today. I'm Becca Jones-Albertus the Director of the Solar Eenergy Technologies Office at the US Department of Energy. Very pleased to have you here with us today.

Want to make sure you're aware that this webinar is being recorded. We'll also be taking questions at the end. And, as you know, we are delighted to have the Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm with us today and she'll be talking with solar industry leaders and elected officials about a new tool we're announcing today to accelerate rooftop solar deployment. It's called Solar Automated Permitting Processing Plus - long name, so we call it SolarAPP+ for short - and it reduces the delays and costs associated with attaining permits for rooftop solar installations. And today, we at the Department of Energy are also launching a national campaign called Summer of Solar. And Summer of Solar is all about providing information for consumers about residential and community solar and sharing stories from our diverse communities across the country and other solar experiences. Because the bottom line is, we need to make it faster and easier for consumers to go solar, especially those in underserved communities. Throughout the summer you'll be seeing solar celebrations from us taking place in communities that are connecting to SolarAPP+ and you can follow the campaign on social media and see where the celebrations are taking place with the hashtag #RunningOnSunshine.

And now it's my great pleasure to introduce Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. She is leading the charge inviting the climate crisis, promoting energy justice and creating clean energy jobs across America. Madam Secretary the floor is yours.

Secretary Granholm:
Thank you, Dr. Jones-Albertus! Hello everyone! I'm so thrilled to have you all join us as we kick off this Summer of Solar. In just the last few weeks, solar energy, in America, just so that you know, has hit two very key milestones. First we crossed 100 gigawatts of solar energy capacity; awesome. And second, we now have 3 million solar installations nationwide that are harnessing clean energy from sunshine every single day. And thanks to the investments that were made during the Obama Administration to lower the cost of solar aggressively we've seen the costs of utility scale solar plants drop by 80%. And that has helped, to the industry, to double in just the last three and a half years. So today that solar industry generates enough power to power 18.6 million homes nationwide. And the exciting thing is there's still tons of rooms to grow. It's great news for President Biden's ambitious Climate Agenda and Clean Energy Agenda, the administration is doing everything we can to put the country on a path to having cutting, by 50%, the carbon emissions by the end of this decade and reaching 100% clean electricity by 2035. All on the way to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. And to get there we're going to need to deploy, deploy, deploy clean energy technologies, and that means adding hundreds and hundreds more gigawatts of solar capacity to the grid. And we have no time to waste, as we are seeing the record breaking heat waves and droughts and wildfires that are ravaging so much of the country. Tells us that the costs of delay, are simply too high. And at the same time, you know the economics tell us that there's simply no reason to wait because solar power just makes sense. Not only is it cheaper than fossil fuels and much of the country, offering lower energy bills, it allows households to generate their own power. And since many can sell the excess power that they've generated back to their utilities it's an easy way to make a little extra cash. And if you combine that with the battery storage technologies that are improving, day by day, you know, solar offers the key to a future where families will feel secure and energy independent and capable of keeping their lights on; no matter what Mother Nature throws at us.

So it's amazing the progress we've made and we have so much more to do. And so therefore, with all of those advantages we want to make the choice to go solar even easier and that's why we've set goals to cut in half, again, the price of solar in the next decade and to make it the cheapest source of electricity in America. And it's also why we designed SolarAPP+ or SolarAPP "Plus." I don't know if you're using the "Plus" or not, I'm not sure, Rebecca. But SolarAPP+ we're using that to cut the red tape that often delays the solar permitting process. So, in some parts of the country customers have to wait weeks for approvals before they can get their solar installations online and other places it's months that they have to wait and all those days, add up to distractions from larger projects. It adds up to dollars lost. Obviously, it contributes to climate change, because the better and more we can get online faster, the more we can do our part to reduce the impacts of climate change. And last year project delays cost homeowners to lose $16 million in wasted energy. You know so it's frustrating for customers, but it's also discouraging companies from setting up shop.

Not too long ago our National Renewable Energy Lab realized that it doesn't have to be this way and they got to work on SolarAPP+. And so they brought the code officials and local government authorities and the industry players, all together, to figure out how is the best way to streamline the permitting process to the greatest extent possible. And so, through the standardization and automation, this SolarAPP+ tool makes it easier and faster for local governments to process applications. It's instant, one stop permitting! And it works wonders. I mean earlier in the year, we launched a pilot program and four different localities and  the reason we did, that is because we wanted to show how it works and the results that we've been seeing are incredible. Tucson, Arizona managed to reduce the time that was needed for permitting reviews from 20 business days to zero. Speeding up permitting. That means that we can do more installations more clean energy capacity, more jobs. It's part of the soft costs that have prevented people from adopting more solar.

So today we are super excited to open up this tool for a wider use, free, on our SolarAPP+ team is ready and eager to work with any city or any county that wants to sign up. All we need to help you cut red tape or some details about your electrical code and a compliance check with your engineering team and then we're good to go. We're setting up a goal right now to add 125 more communities to our list of users, by the end of September. So for you local officials who might be tuning in stick with us, because if you aren't convinced yet that you need this game changing tool, you will be after you hear from our special guests, which will be joining us right now.

So first up it is my pleasant pleasure to introduce you to Lynn Jurich the CEO of Sunrun, a residential solar and storage company that is serving over half a million customers in 22 states; Washington DC - Puerto Rico as well. Lynn Thank you so much for joining us. I was hoping that you can give our audience just a deeper understanding of the issues involved with solar permitting. So maybe you can tell us a little bit about the permitting pain points and how those have shaped Sunrun's model.

Lynn Jurich:
Absolutely it's my pleasure to be here and this is thrilling. I mean I'm a solar entrepreneur; I've been at it for 14 years. And I have to give a quick shout out to a fellow entrepreneur Andrew Birch, who was really... put his heart and soul into this concept. And it's because we believe that this is simply the biggest thing we can do right now to unlock more renewable development. And a lot of times people look at the home, at the rooftop and they think it's a small part of the solution, but it is actually one of the fastest ways we can get that renewable capacity up on the grid, because if you think about carbon reduction we're going to have to reduce a lot to buy everything into our home. So we're not gonna pump so much more electricity out into our homes to electrify our cars and other devices in the house. And all this stuff can be powered by rooftop solar and it can be installed in one day. And I'm glad you mentioned the battery as well, because what happens now is with many Homeowners they're installing the solar they're adding a battery. What that does is it actually creates a powerplant. It creates this ability for, you know... if we put solar and batteries on 10,000 homes, that's 100 megawatt powerplant that we can dispatch into the system. I mean, this is... we're talking big time stuff and just Sunrun just focusing only on residential customers. We are the second largest owner of solar in the country, including utility. So this stuff scales.

So how can we scale it even faster is with this SolarAPP+. And if you need to... any sort of proof point on why that saves people so much money? Why it's going to accelerate the adoption? You just look to the international market so in places like in Australia and Europe, where they have this sort of instantaneous programming, the cost is half. And you actually... it's half the cost to install versus in the United States. And so what you've seen then is that's why like places like Australia you've been able to get 20, 25% of rooftops to have solar on it and work here in the US we're only at 3%. So this is a huge asset for us just waiting to be unleashed. And I cannot be more excited about the DOE's leadership on this. It's just really incredible.

Secretary Granholm:
It's so exciting! I'm so glad to hear you say that. I mean obviously, it will benefit the ability of individuals to get this on their roofs. I'm wondering, do you see any broader impacts on the solar market as a result of this?

Lynn Jurich:
Yeah, absolutely. I think what we're realizing is we're, as I said, we're going to need so much more electricity on our grid. And we're going to need renewable electricity. So how are we going to build that out fast enough at scale to to meet our needs? And when you do the modeling and anticipate the cost reduction for going to see, what you find is that the lowest cost system is going to be this combination of that utility scale solar and wind that you're mentioning and this distributed system which can take advantage of using the existing infrastructure of the rooftop of the garage for the battery, increasingly also using your electric vehicle to be an energy asset off of the grid. And again consumers the technologies are here, consumers can save money with these technologies, but we made it too complicated. We put too many steps in it. And so what this enables us to do is bring those solutions to people, which are really... a lot of people think of renewable future, it has to be sacrifice it has to be worse, I have to I need that sort of scarcity mindset, this is a better future. And so what this tool is going to enable us to do is really build out that distributed system to compliment the centralized system. And I think people are going to be pretty surprised about the fact that we have these tools to solve this climate crisis right now.

Secretary Granholm:
I love it! No sacrifice, only benefit. I have a feeling that this rollout will mean huge uptake I think you're exactly right.

But our audience doesn't have to take it just from you or me our team here - fantastic team - has put together a brief video from folks in cities and counties that served as our SolarAPP+ pluses early adopters so let's take a watch.

[Video plays]

Geoff Simmons:
Here at Pleasant Hill our city council and mayor a very interested in people using these renewable energy sources, we have paper plans coming in. That would take days to process and then get back out the system here was a paper system that was all manual.

Carla Blackwell:
Since the mid 2000s both Pima County and the city of Tucson have been extremely aggressive in trying to promote solar in our region. We were being inundated with solar permits. They were sitting in front of a lot of much more complex building permits and commercial permits that we needed to get out the door.

Craig Carlson:
The City of Menifee right now is the third fastest growing jurisdiction in the state of California. The current environment at the city of Menifee for solar submittals is anywhere from 50 to 75 solar projects a week. Sometimes I've had 30 in one day.

Carla Blackwell:
It was fortuitous timing, that the folks from solar rap we're looking for people to participate in a pilot a more automated review that worked huge for us. We're looking at it 90% reduction in the solar permits that we have to touch and process.

Geoff Simmons:
The thought of using a program like SolarAPP+ was very intriguing, because it takes all of that paper out of the picture. It's made things a whole lot easier as far as process. We don't have contractors coming to us with incomplete plans or plans that are incorrect in some way.

Craig Carlson:
Now, as a contractor when you submit a set of plans through the SolarAPP+ you're actually having a computer generate and do the review without any preconceived notions. And once it's submitted online it takes 10 to 15 minutes and it's done. It's instantaneous there's not any waiting...

Carla Blackwell:
I think the biggest benefit for the solar installers and contractors will be the reduction in time. Time from application or even sales with their customer to installation will be reduce tremendously and we're already seeing that.

Craig Carlson:
A jurisdiction would really have to look seriously hard inward not to take advantage of this, because of the time savings and advantage that it gives you.

Geoff Simmons:
It's that next logical step in residential solar. I would definitely recommend that other jurisdictions and communities use SolarAPP+.

[Video ends]

Secretary Granholm:
I love it. I know it's great and incredible and there's a lot of comments in the chat so feel free to pipe in for those to whom those comments are directed. I think it's important to note that part of the benefit of SolarAPP+ is one person raises that jurisdictions. It's not so sometimes it's not just about the red tape, but it's about the fact that different jurisdictions have different processes and this APP does all of that work for you, which is fantastic. But those of you watching still, you may or may not be ready to take the leap so we've invited officials from four cities and counties that have taken the leap to say hello, and tell you a little bit about what SolarAPP+ can do for you.

So joining me now is John Alita - who is the deputy city manager of Stockton, California, Regina Romero - who is the Mayor of Tucson, Arizona, Will Jawando - who's a Council member serving Montgomery County, Maryland, and Sam Liccardo - who is Mayor of San Jose, California. Hello everybody. Thank you so much for for being with us.

And let me just start with this, I'll start with John in Stockton. So Stockton just decided to pilot SolarAPP+ and I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about your reasoning behind the decision and where you see this fitting in with your city's climate and energy goals.

John Alita:
Thank you for having me and sure I would love to talk about that.

So, in terms of our decision, first I want to just thank our staff here in the city of Stockton, we are fortunate enough to have some very forward thinking people who recognize a good opportunity when they see it.

And so the first reason we decided to go with SolarAPP+ is the fact that it was created with involvement from cities from the get go. So we know that our requirements, our compliance checklist, all of those things that we need in the review process have already been considered, so it we know it works with local government.

The second reason is that we also know it has industry support. So the large players in the solar rooftop are already behind this and so those are the same folks that we're working with in our Community Development Department, so knowing that it has the trust and backing of those people from the beginning, also gives us a high level of confidence in the in the product.

But I think most importantly it really revolves around our capacity and our workload issues. And we're very lean city, we don't have a large staff. And we also have seen increasing numbers of solar rooftop applications. We've had a 26% increase in applications over the last five years and that makes up about a quarter of our total permit application. So a lot of intensive staff time goes into this.

And so, with SolarAPP+ we number 1) we save staff time, number 2) our turnaround time even with our lean staff aren't too bad they're about four days, but with SolarAPP+ it's instantaneous. And our customers don't have to leave the comfort of their office or home, so they can go online, they can use SolarAPP+ they can immediately pay for their permit and they're good to go. So I mean it's rare that you can find something that works as well, for all the parties involved, so in that way, I think it's made it an easy choice.

In terms of how it fits in to our larger sustainability goals, I think the most significant way is in a special project that we are working on now. We received about an $11 million grant from the state of California strategic growth Council for a transformative climate community as last year. And that is a specific investment in our most at risk neighborhoods to help improve the effects of climate change and a large component of that is a project to install rooftop solar for free on 108 single family homes, as well as 4 multifamily dwellings. And so, we know this influx of applications and projects is going forward with our partners so to have SolarAPP+ there in the beginning, before we go through that process, is really I think going to help us meet our project goals.

I see another piece of that is that we not only are putting solar on homes there, we also have a workforce development component from people from that area will be trained as installers. And so having them kind of learn and use SolarAPP+ kind of from the beginning is good, I think just helping that workforce development piece.

One of the things we're also trying to do is boost our promotion of just the state and federal incentives that exist out there. We need to do a better job of that here and that's our goal this year in Stockton so with that kind of campaign, we do expect to see a higher influx of applications. So again, it helps us in that way.

And just in a more broad sense, I think, as Lynn said a moment ago, people who are putting solar on their homes are the same folks that are thinking about how do I get an electric vehicle or a plug in hybrid. So we have some very ambitious goals for EV charging infrastructure and creating those kinds of opportunities. So downstream, we do expect that it's also going to help us kind of help our residents adopt EV - electric vehicle - charging. So those are some of the ways that that it's going to work for us.

Secretary Granholm:
Awesome! All right, that was that was John Alita who is the Deputy City Manager of Stockton. Thanks so much John for that. And for folks who are asking questions in the chat hopefully our DOE team can address as many as we can get to. I really appreciate the engagement here.

And let me go to now Mayor Romero. I mentioned that Tucson was able to make incredible progress in reducing wait times for permitting, thanks for SolarAPP+. And I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit more about how this tool has improved permitting and inspection in your city. What are the other benefits, maybe that it's generated?

Regina Romero:
Well, thank you for having me, Secretary Granholm, we really appreciate it.

Tucson, Arizona has 350 plus days of sun; one of the sunniest cities in America. And we have, the city of Tucson, has been taken advantage - right - of the sun that we enjoy to go solar. And so we've installed more than 10.5 megawatts of energy which basically is like taking 73,000 vehicles off the road. So we have a deep commitment. In September, Mayor and Council passed a climate emergency declaration, and so we now have a... really like a roadmap to get to what we need to do in terms of solar and climate resiliency, etc. And we also see it with an eye to equity.

So what does it mean from going for permitting process that was taking four weeks now, with SolarAPP+ we we give a permit the same day. And with that, for the installers and for the companies that are installing solar in the city of Tucson time is money. And so, that helps our companies install a much more solar installations in rooftops. We just approved about 450 installations in the last 60 days alone that we have been using SolarAPP+ in the city of Tucson and because time is money. For the city of Tucson we can charge less for the permit. So what that means is that it becomes less expensive for the installation and we make solar much more available to communities... to low income communities in our city. So that is something that is unbelievable. We are absolutely enjoying the process; learning from it. And because we are seeing so much development happening in the city of Tucson we are encouraging the installation of of rooftop solar here in Tucson. So it just in so many different ways, it helps not just the company's install much more, it helps low income families, but it also helps our climate emergency declaration, and our climate goals here in Arizona.

Secretary Granholm:
All right, sounds like it's really been a win, win, win for Tucson - residents, businesses, government alike. That's Mayor Regina Romero. Thank you so much for joining us.

And let me jump over to Council Member Will Jawando, let's hear from you. We talked a little bit about how solar benefits households and what the SolarAPP+ means for folks interested in going solar. What potential impacts do you see for your local workforce?

Will Jawando:
Well thank you Secretary Granholm for having all of us. And not to be outdone by the mayor with those 350 days of sun; I'm going to have to visit, but we do have a beautiful Chesapeake Bay watershed here that we're trying to preserve for future generations.

And in Montgomery County we have a goal of an 80% reduction in emissions by 2030. Which is in line with some of the great goals of the Biden/Harris administration ... that you mentioned earlier. And if we're going to get there, we're going to have to change every form of our society, as you know. And how we heat our homes, what our transportation system looks like, and certainly what we do in our buildings - right? And it's going to be critical and there's no way we get there without greening the grid. Otherwise, we could see an increase in emmission. So for us, solar is a key, key strategy for everybody; it's a key, key strategy. We have 1.1 million people, we have 500 square miles we even agricultural reserve, rural urban, suburban, and rooftops to parking lots to some of our less productive and fallow land in our agricultural reserve. We're doing everything we can to incentivize, expand, and enable solar installations. And so we have to do it to save our planet and achieve our climate goals. And so this will not only help keep us all here - and my grandkids and their their kids for future generations - it's also, as the mayor mentioned, it's an equity issue for communities that have all too often been left behind economically.

We know in these multiple pandemics, we are going through COVID, the economic fallout, the racial and social justice fallout that we've seen. Solar has an answer for that. Particularly in this context, it requires a diverse array of trades people, whether it's electricians plumbers, the installers themselves.

And we, also, often remember rooftop solar, in particular, requires roofs to be in good condition. So roof repairs themselves, there's all these downstream benefits for the economy here in a county like ours and across the country. And while you've heard earlier, they save residents dramatically a large amount of money. This in this app make it easier to do that by injecting more money into our local economy that's going to help our residents help us to continue services. And so it's a really virtuous cycle through these lower utility bills and the money that will come back into the economy.

Another thing that doesn't often get talked about, but I like to point out - and we're already seeing this here - if you think about the fossil fuel industry, the solar industry, as opposed to that is much more reliant on actual workers instead of large machines that are used to extract resources from our earth. The solar industry currently employs over 350,000 people and growing, we heard from the great industry leader here. And this is going to allow - along with many other plans the administration has - allowed us to even increase that number even more in creating more jobs in our community. So we're already starting to see these benefits. We recently passed a zoning text amendment that's going to allow solar in our agricultural reserve and fallow land; we just had an application in last week for our first 2 megawatt, hopefully have hundreds more to be installed there. But rooftops have to be a huge, huge part of the solution, especially in a county jurisdiction with a million people with many, many houses and homes.

So we're working hard. We're excited that I think hopefully we can come show you the work we're doing here Secretary and I think that's an opportunity for that in the future. But I'm really excited to join all my colleagues and really pushing this forward and would encourage any local official really take advantage of this, because it's good for our environment, it's good for our residents, and good for our workers and we need it now more than ever. So really appreciate to the opportunity to share.

Secretary Granholm:
Awesome, awesome. And Montgomery County, Maryland is lucky to have you, Council Member Will Jawando. Thank you so much.

And you know just to build on that, if there's one thing you should know about me it's I'm totally obsessed with creating good paying jobs that are going to be in demand for years to come... career launching jobs. And so I'm so thrilled to hear that SolarAPP+ can help play a part in that clean energy job creation. So finally I want to talk to Mayor Ricardo. San Jose was an early leader in automated solar permitting and it predated our launch of SolarAPP+. And as I understand it, you saw your solar permit applications jump 600%, I think, after you launch your online tool. So we were inspired by your leadership. I'm wondering what are the lessons that we can draw when it comes to newer technologies like energy storage, for example?

Mayor Liccardo:
It's an honor to be with you, Madam Secretary and really great to be here with clean energy champions from around the country; we appreciate the leadership Department of Energy on this and I agree the SolarAPP+ is a great step of what we've seen evidence here in San Jose.

Since we installed our own online permitting system that's really accelerated what we're doing here. We've been able to issue about 20,000 permits for 175 megawatts in that time. And we need to push hard, because we're also the largest city in the country to mandate all electric construction of all new buildings. We're gas free going forward. So we're going to need a lot of solar and we're pushing hardware, the third highest PDA adoption adopter in the country; we're hoping to be number one soon.

But battery storage is really critical, as you pointed out. And we know it's critical for resilience whether we've got wildfires or power safety shut offs out here in California or hurricanes in southeast or anywhere else. And we're all trying to see how we can flatten that the duck curve of demand Spikes. What we've learned really through our efforts, we are now going online with permitting for all battery storage systems as well and we've learned a few things through this process.

At first, I would urge everyone to go digital if you can. We certainly did it during the pandemic when it became pretty essential to find ways to accommodate work at home. And that's helped us accelerate quite a bit. We've been able to permit about 800 at home projects, storage, and a few more of a commercial side. And we're now engaging some virtual inspections. Although virtual inspections, I should say can be challenging, because we haven't yet figured out how to save a lot of time. Take some education, certainly with the contractors, as well as with city staff about this inspection needs, but we hope that virtual inspections online permanent we can all get there quickly.

The second lesson we've really learned is around trying to treat all these systems is being integrated we know solar customers are likely to be interested and in battery storage. They're also likely to be interested, we hope, in electric vehicle charging. And being able to integrate all that into a single permit is our goal and we're trying to do that in the next couple months so that folks simply are coming in, for a one stop shop. And we can push as much as possible onto the grid and off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. And we're also trying to work with our inspectors and sure we can get a combination inspection and make all that happen quickly.

And then the last thing I'd say is that training is really critical. We've got to invest in our people and that's both for city staff, as well as for contractors. The technology advances are happening so fast and there's a constant introduction of new products and revised products. And we know, particularly with home energy storage, there's a lot of additional engineering involved a lot of city review and inspection to ensure that we have safety. And so we're going to continue to need a lot of research and a lot of training and we appreciate partnership with the Department of Energy to help all of us upscale in various ways. And we need a lot of local partnerships with community colleges with trades and nonprofits to ensure that we expand the pipeline and continued upscale. So we've got a lot of work to do and I'm really excited about this great step.

Secretary Granholm:
Well, Mayor, thank you so much for your great leadership, your example and we're just going to continue to follow what you're doing and try to try to get as many people with battery systems as well as solar systems on their on their roofs - right. And and in their garages, depending on where the storage is. So folks, there you have it, if you really want to share in this Summer of Solar saving time for your residents and money for your local government while attracting new businesses, new jobs, new opportunities for your people, y'all need SolarAPP+. So I want to thank everybody for joining us this afternoon and I know that there's been a lot of chat in there and I'm going to turn it back over to Becca just in a second Jones-Albertus, but I just do want to say, we are really grateful to those who have signed us up since our pilot. And I hope to see dozens and dozens more of the communities represented here today on that list by September 30. Let's get to 125 communities who raise their hands.

Becca!

Becca Jones-Albertus:
Thank you so much, Madam Secretary. Thank you for being with us to officially launched SolarAPP+. We're so excited to see how SolarAPP+ is going to help communities, make it faster easier and cheaper to install more solar. So for all you, you can learn more about our Solar Challenge and our Summer of Solar campaign on our press release, which we're going to post in the chat.

And now we're gonna have the opportunity to hear from some additional local government leaders who's communities have begun engaging in the process of adopting SolarAPP+.

Just pulling up a video here. It should be running in just a moment.

[Video plays]

Sylvester Turner:
Simplifying and streamlining the solar permitting process is one of the few levers, the city of Houston has to help reduce barriers to adoption. Automating plan review...

[Video ends]

Becca Jones-Albertus:
Sorry about that. A few technical challenges. We'll have it up in just a minute.

[Video plays]

Sylvester Turner:
Simplifying and streamlining the solar permitting process is one of the few levers, the city of Houston has to help reduce barriers to adoption. Automating plan review, permit approval, project tracking, would, also, save time and money for both Installers and the city. This is why I have asked the permitting center to test the SolarAPP+ software in Houston.

I'm Mayor Sylvester Turner of Houston, Texas. Chair of Climbing Mayors and the Resilient Cities Network, and we are connected with SolarAPP+.

Jesse Arreguin:
Hello I'm Jesse Arreguin the Mayor of the city of Berkeley and President of the Association of Bay Area Governance and I'm excited to bring SolarAPP+ to our community, as it's a vital tool for us to continue our national climate leadership. It will also cut costs associated with our residents ability to put solar on the roof. SolarAPP+ will be a benefit to our entire Bay Area community. I congratulate all who've made this tool possible on such.

Bryan Osorio:
Hi everyone, my name is Bryan Osorio and I'm the Mayor of the city Delano, California. I'm excited for SolarAPP+ and its efforts to streamline the pruning process for simpler solar installations. Solar energy is important to achieve our renewable energy goals, but it also supports local economic development, it helps combat climate change, and it helps modernize the electric grid.

Sara Lamnin:
My my name is Sara Lamnin. I am a Hayward City Council member and excited to be learning about the SolarAPP+. Solar energy is vital to our community. Of course, not only for achieving renewable energy goals, but also for supporting local economic development and enabling people to easily and smoothly participate in the process of keeping a clean and sustainable community.

Clarence Anthony:
Greetings! I'm Clarence Anthony the CEO and Executive Director of the National League of Cities. Local leaders can use SolarAPP+ to ensure a high quality and efficient solar permitting process for building in their communities. The seamless solar permitting process by SolarAPP+ improves the effectiveness of local government staff. But more importantly this efficiency translate into better services for residents area, businesses, and local industries. NLC encourages local governments to learn how SolarAPP+ can advance your communities goals.

[Video ends]

Becca Jones-Albertus:
We are so happy to have these local governments, getting connected and seeing the value of SolarAPP+. And they're not alone. Support is coming from the solar industry - incredible support from the industry, as well as industries related to solar.

One of our supporters is a familiar face to many of you. Those of you who watch HGTV might recognize Jonathan Scott co-host of the TV show Property Brothers and he's here to say a few words. Let's take a look.

[Video plays]

Jonathan Scott:
Everybody agrees, the US needs to deploy clean local and renewable energy resources at a historic pace in order to tackle the climate crisis. Part of that solution is bringing the cost of technologies, like solar, way down. That's why I support the National Renewable Energy Laboratories solar automated permit processing tool, otherwise known as SolarAPP+.

So much time and money is wasted on how long it takes to get a solar system approved and permitted. This system automates and expedites all of that. It's good for cities and it's good for homeowners. So I encourage you to join me, the Department of Energy, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratories by visiting solarapp.nrel.gov and sign up for a pilot today. The system is offered to cities and counties at no cost. It walks solar and storage installers through an automated permit approval process. So checking all your work along the way, and making sure that homeowners can get solar safely and quickly, it can be integrated into existing solar application software platforms as well, so the adoption is pretty much turnkey just like on all my properties.

Abby Hopper:
Hi! I'm Abby Hopper the President and CEO of SEIA. I'm so excited to be here today to help launch the SolarAPP+ platform and tool. It has been a couple of years in the making. SEIA has been intimately involved in this process with a bunch of our partners and other institutions. And it's been a real pleasure to see this come to fruition, I know what a difference this tool will make. I know that it will make residential solar permitting and commercial solar permitting more efficient, more inexpensive, easier for your companies to navigate. And so that will help solve the climate crisis, because we need rapid solar deployment in all market segments.

Also know that this will be a win, win situation. It will be a win for our installers, it will be a win for jurisdictions. I'm so pleased that we have this tool that we worked on together.

[Video ends]

Becca Jones-Albertus:
Thanks so much Jonathan and Abby. And now I'm pleased to turn things over to Jeff Cook who's the lead developer for SolarAPP+ at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Thanks so much for joining us today, Jeff.

Jeff Cook:
Thanks Becca. I'm so excited to be here and talk through the SolarAPP+. With all the great speakers on the on the call and certainly all of the chat and questions that are there. So as as Becca mentioned, National Renewable Energy Lab is thrilled to be leading the SolarAPP+ project and it's a collaborative effort. We are going to present a bit about the performance of SolarAPP+ and detailing some of the great feedback we've already heard and discussion we've heard from the Secretary and others.

And so we can move to the next slide and just reminding everyone is what's already said that the SolarAPP+ plus was designed in a collaborative effort with the International Code Council, the National Fire Protection Association, UL, IAEI, code officials, local governments, and contractors. We all came together to develop that win, win solution that the Secretary, and of course, Abby was just speaking about. And so that group of organizations came together to develop SolarAPP+, which is in fact esigned to be, as the Secretary was saying, a one stop shop to get an instant permit for solar.

We've also rebranded the SolarAPP+ plus as the Secretary was referring to, because we are expanding to storage and we're already evaluating storage at this point in time. And, oh, by the way, we had one of our partners - Tesla - on the project Val Anderson over at Tesla actually started to submit a job, while the Secretary was speaking and it took her 10 minutes to get the job done get an instant permit in Pima County. Of course, they're operating in partnership with Tucson, Arizona. So Val already issued a project in the process of this webinar which is really exciting, that means that Tesla can move right through their process, avoiding that long delay in permitting time.

In addition, I wanted to point out to this group that the long term future of the SolarAPP+ is going to be managed by UL as the long term owner of the product. And then, in addition, the SolarAPP+ foundation is going to be managing all of the future expansions of the application. So as I mentioned, we are already incorporating storage into the application, and this is residential rooftop PV systems and storage together. And so we are, at current, the SolarAPP+ is focused on residential rooftop PV. And as I mentioned, the SolarAPP+ foundation is going to be the oversight body which will continue to keep this collaborative development organization together, which would have a balanced group of code official, government contractors, and subject matter experts to really continue this discussion and build out the application going forward. 

And so we can move to the next slide.

From here, and what I want to let everyone know is the general SolarAPP+ process. So as I was mentioning, Tesla actually did their project in SolarAPP+. They inputted their design, they then took the design and submitted it in Pima County permitting system. And the approval document that was produced after we did our code compliance checks in SolarAPP+, then they paid for their permit fee, and they got an instant permit in Pima County. And this is generally the process used everywhere, more or less.

If we move to the next slide, I want to start giving you a little bit more detail in just the terms of how SolarAPP+ is actually performing.

Those pilot results, the Secretary already teased for us. So let's get into it, we can move to the next slide.

We piloted this in our first three communities reflected here. Menifee, California - being the fourth Community - and Stockton - as you heard from earlier on the call being our fifth community in that second phase of pilots.

But, as for the first phase of pilots, we included about 150 jobs in that pilot phase. We had a control group of jobs and we had a SolarAPP+ group of jobs. We tracked both of those to evaluate between the two of them. Subsequently, of course, all these communities have gone to launch the application. And exciting note Menifee, California launched today for all contractors; so that's our fourth Community launched today. Of course, we hope Stockton, will be the next one, to follow their after.

So subsequently 620 jobs have already gone through the SolarAPP+ beyond the piloting phase. And we can move to the next slide to see what happens.

So ultimately here, you can see, between our pilots there in the 2021 phase between the control group and traditional, you're seeing we saved that about that 18 days in Tucson, five days in Pima County and about a day in Pleasant Hill based on their varying processes. You can also see that permitting timelines have been increasing, at least in the context of Tucson, and that's in relation to some of the pandemic and really having put a strain on the ability to process permits, in addition to being inundated with tournament as Pima and Tucson were alluding to in the in the call earlier.

And so, ultimately really exciting to see SolarAPP+ is delivering instant permitting for these jurisdictions, which is exactly what we suggested. Now let's move to the next slide.

Or exactly what we expected to see of course given that this is an instant platform.

And that results in real time saving for the jurisdiction - across all three jurisdictions, SolarAPP+ can manage both the initial permit review process and revision that may be resulting from design changes. So only focused on the pilot part of it, we saved over 185 hours of time... that time in reviewing those permits. Subsequently we've already saved 420 hours of time in relation to these projects in these communities. And that exceeds the time it took to set up the pilot and participate in those pilot programs for the communities which across all three and cumulative total for all three jurisdictions was about 235-ish hours.

And so we've returned our investments already through then in terms of time savings, in fact doubling up that so they're getting real time savings, as I mentioned before, to ensure they can focus on those complex projects that they're getting.

And so if we move to the next slide.

We are clearly saving time at the permitting phase, importantly, we are not increasing time at inspection. So we're not moving that time to later in the process. And rather we're showing here that inspection duration, the time it takes an inspector it's complete their inspection, is basically the same time. In one community - Pima - might look a little bit... a few minutes shorter in contact with SolarAPP+ and then in Tuscon it might be a minute or so more.  In short, they're basically the same. And in fact the inspectors in those communities have already mentioned to us that they expect in the future that having one standardized inspection checklist that the SolarAPP+ developed, is going to be making inspection a lot easier to do as opposed to looking at 1001 different single line or three line diagrams they get today.

So that's exciting. Moving to the next slide you can see that we have increased our or haven't impacted inspection and we haven't resulted in a significant uptick in failure of inspections, as a result from using the application. So overall, there are about 5% of our jobs that have so far made it through inspection that failed their inspection and that's six of the 123 jobs in total; so overall solar job rarely fail inspections at all. In either of the traditional or the SolarAPP+ since. Of those six jobs that failed, we'd rather have a zero there, of course, five of the six of those occurred in May and subsequently we've only had one failure since. And most of those failures were actually related to miscommunications in terms of the process. this was a totally new process, there was confusion about what documents needed to be on site for the inspection and which didn't, and we've developed an inspection training, in particular, to help folks to be able to understand what's happening. So we're really excited about this and especially that the inspection failure rate is very low and it's going down hopefully to zero, which will be our goal.

Moving on to the next slide.

Importantly we're not adding more time to inspection, we're also reducing the time it takes to get an installation. Which all else being equal, ensures that these projects are installed faster and they provide more economic benefit to consumers and the grid faster as well. So, as mentioned earlier in the call, we're losing millions of dollars by delays and we're seeing in these communities, we are increased are speeding up the timeline to install which is resulting in benefits to the consumer, it's resulting in benefits to the jurisdiction, and it's resulting in benefits to the contractor; so again a win, win, win, which is exciting to see.

Moving to the next slide.

Again, so how can you participate in the program?

We can jump right to the next one.

If you are a local government, we are so excited that you're joining us today, and we want to work with you. I heard a couple of folks already registered by the chat; which is exciting. That is the best way to do it. And so I think Susanna, if she hasn't already, she's gonna throw a link into the chat about how to register, if you haven't seen that already. In addition, ultimately, there are three basic steps: get to the website, register, then answer a couple of questions for us and click launch pilot, and then we will work with you on how to start that. It's a 10 to 15 minute process to do this. And it's a critical first step for you to get involved with SolarAPP+. So I encourage you to do that. If you are a contractor on this call, you can also register at that same link. Register there, let us know what communities you're operating in today, and we can get you set up to push permits today in Pima County, Tucson, Menifee, California, Pleasant Hill, our pilot communities as well, and then keep keep you informed when other communities adopt.

Moving to the next slide.

There's a couple of key next steps, I wanted to include here, which is again those links, as you can see there, to the upcoming webinar from the National League of Cities - excited to work with them; registering. And once you do register as the jurisdiction, for example, you'll get this form here which will walk you through all the stuff that you need to do; again in about 10-ish or so minutes. And then, finally, as I mentioned, if you are an inspector or a local government, and you have questions about how SolarAPP+ works, "How would you inspect that system?" We encourage you to go to the International Renewable Energy Council - IREC. SolarAPP+ inspection training it's free and online for everybody to use today and we're looking forward to working with you all going forward.

So with that, whirlwind of a webinar. I think we do have a few minutes left for questions and so I've looked through or been following the chat of those questions. And I think there's a fair amount of them we can get to today before we have to wrap up here at the turn of the hour.

For those of you - for those questions keep putting them in the chat. We will be sure to respond to as many of them, as we can today. And then we will also make sure to respond to those that we can, after the fact, as well.

So there was a couple of questions in here, the first that I want to cover is,"How does it actually work with a software system that a jurisdiction is using?"

And I'm excited to say that we've actually announced a partnership with ESTELA, one of the leading government software vendors. In addition, there's going to be an announcement tomorrow with EnerGov and the Tyler Technologies suite of products so with Tyler Technologies there'll be an announcement tomorrow we're very excited about relating to how you can use any Tyler software user today will be able to turn SolarAPP+ on in their existing processes very quickly. And of course Stockton was on the call and they're using ESTELA system and they've already configured ESTELA.

To be able to work with SolarAPP+ and so, if you are a jurisdiction, you have your own software product, where you issue permits that's great, let us know in the registration process will work with your system; if it's EnerGov, if it's ESTELA, if it's somebody else we can work with them, including Central Square - which we're excited about their involvement as well.

So ultimately that one I wanted to cover right off the bat. The other one I wanted to get to is the cost of SolarAPP+ it's free to jurisdictions. If you're a jurisdiction and you want to adopt SolarAPP+, register, let us know, we'll work with you to get it set up. If you're a contractor, there is a cost on a per permit system. So there's a $25 cost for each system that you run through the application and submit for a permanent. Of course, if you're just testing and looking in the system, you don't have to pay for that. If you are - I saw there was a couple questions, "How do I learn how to use the application?" So I threw into the chat a link to our knowledge base where all of the information about SolarAPP+ - how to use it, how to run a job, how to register - all that stuff is on our knowledge base.

And, of course, if you register, we can help you navigate through it, and so there is an opportunity there.

And then there was another question, "How do we get this to every jurisdiction across the country?", and for that I'm looking to everyone on this call. So we are engaging with every community that needs that - which is a lot of communities across the country - and we're working in six States already and we're working to expand nationwide. So that the application is currently based on the 2017 National Electrical Code and the 2018 International Building Code and International Residential Code. We are working to expand to the 2020 and 2021 code cycle. So if there's communities, for which you are operating in or if you are one of those communities using one of those  codes or set of codes, we are already ready to work with you. For those of you that want to help us spread the message about SolarAPP+ there's a ton of ways to do that. We encourage you all to register and follow us online to get to that. You can also email us via our knowledge base website, which I threw in the chat as well. So you can get involved every organization on here, if they talked with five jurisdiction that you're aware of, we could get to the 20,000 jurisdiction and well blow past the Secretary's commitment for 125 communities engaged by September 30. And so again to get involved, please do reach out to us by the SolarAPP+ website, to be able to learn how to get involved. We will take support from all of you to distribute all of the great information about SolarAPP+ including this webinar to everyone, you work with.

So I wanted to make sure I covered that one as well. I wanted to cover scope expansion too. I saw there was a bunch of questions and we've already alluded to, so we rebranded from SolarAPP to SolarAPP+. And that's because we're incorporating battery storage, and so we are already piloting battery storage in Pima County, Tucson, Arizona, Pleasant Hill, California. We're working to do it and Menifee, California and our other pilot and communities there after in addition to expanding the application going forward. So we're still in the piloting phase of that. And it's not publicly available yet, but we're working to do that. 

There were questions about expanding to commercial and industrial application.

That is on our roadmap and we encourage folks in that space to reach out to us and engage with us, because it is not a small task - as you might imagine - to get thoughts on paper of instant permitting for these projects and getting that to fruition. And so we encourage you all to engage with us on that topic. In addition to building integrated roofing, our our PV product. So the solar roof that you've heard a lot about, we're working to include those ground mounted systems as well. But none of that - just to clarify - right now, SolarAPP+ is only processing residential rooftop permits. And it's only processing, those for licensed contractors, so we aren't doing homeowner driven projects which I saw also was the question in the chat as well.

And so I think - really running through these - I got a couple more I think I can do here.

And there's one I thought - or a bunch I thought - around the structural requirements are within the SolarAPP+. "What is SolarAPP+ doing to evaluate the structural integrity of the home?"

And that is a critical piece of the SolarAPP+ and we have compliance related requirements for it. We're also evaluating the wind and snow load requirements of the community, as well as the temperatures all in the process of approving the project and making sure they have the proper listings etc.

And so on the structural side, so those of you with questions - we're happy to walk you through all of that. There's an example approval document on our website where we articulate the structural requirements that are happening and just to be clear, we are always verifying this at the time of inspection. And so, that goes for structural, it goes for fire setbacks, and it goes for the electrical. The SolarAPP+ does not result in no inspection at all. Those inspections still need to be done, but in the important thing is we're verifying workmanship out in the field. So if the inspector see something that the contractor tried to sneak by them out in the field, they would be able to still flag and failed that as they do today. Which is an important check, again, to ensure that we're still installing things safely. Because, as you know, the plan can be perfect, but it does depend on how you install it out in the field and so that's still a critical piece of the system.

And, as I mentioned before there's that inspector training to help clarify how we do that for every part of the process. So that's just focused on the structural side. There's plenty of other compliance checks we're doing on electrical and fire and we're happy to talk through all of those as well.

The last thing I want to get to today - and I'm sorry we're running out of time, but it's on interconnection. And so there were a bunch of questions in there, "How did SolarAPP+ can we equate everything from SolarAPP+ into the interconnection processes as well? How do we get the savings there and get them into the rest of the process?" And so we're excited to say Tucson Electric Power worked with us and Pima County and Tucson can't say enough about Carla Blackwell over there and Lynn Burke and Vine as well and, and the whole team over there for helping us work with Tuscon Electric Power to streamline their processes, to improve them. And so we are already seeing savings with Tucson Electric Power is one example. We're going to be working with utilities to continue to make it more seamless so that in the future, a human doesn't have to review the permitting process, they may not even have to be out on site, certainly for inspection and then they can have everything automated into the interconnection portal as well, so that there's no human touch in there, but we confirm the design is co-compliant.

And so thanks so much. I'll turn it back to Becca and we'll get to as many other questions in follow ups after.

Becca Jones-Albertus:
Thank you so much, Jeff. That was really informative and I hope all of you can tune in for the National League of Cities webinar in a couple of weeks to continue to learn more.

So to close out, I want to thank all of you for joining us today and remind you to sign up for the Summer of Solar campaign and our Solar Office newsletters.

So you can stay on top of upcoming events like this one and more. See the link on your screen in front of you and we'll put the link, also, in the chat.

But have a great day, everyone, and thank you again for being with us.