Washington Team Gets Funding to Push Solar Power

By Judy Endejan

Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy (“DOE”) awarded a Washington team $520,000 to accelerate the use of solar power in Washington. This money is to be used to target the “soft costs” of solar energy. Soft costs include permitting, installation, design and maintenance and they make up 40 to 50 percent of the total cost of installed rooftop photovoltaic (PV) systems in the U.S.

The Washington team includes the cities of Seattle, Bellevue, Edmonds and Ellensburg; Seattle City Light; Snohomish Public Utilities District; Puget Sound Energy; Northwest SEED; Solar WA; Thurston Energy and Sustainable Connections. The team’s goal is to streamline processes involved in solar power such as permitting, zoning, net metering and interconnection. Contemplated projects include developing an online permitting system and shorter permitting turnaround times.

Currently, over 18,000 local jurisdictions in the U.S. have their own PV permitting requirements, land use codes and zoning ordinances. Furthermore, states and utilities have their own standards for connecting and selling energy back to the energy grid.

The $520,000 grant is part of the DOE’s “Sunshot Initiative” that has four components, one of which is improving the efficiency of installation, design and permitting solar energy systems. The Sunshot Initiative’s goal is to bring the total cost of solar energy systems down by about 75 percent to roughly $1.00 a watt by 2020. This would make large-scale solar energy costs competitive with the electricity from fossil fuels. The other three prongs of the Sunshot Initiative include advancing technologies for the solar cells and systems that convert sunlight into energy; optimizing the performance of solar installation and improving the efficiency of the solar system manufacturing processes.

The DOE has invested more than $1 billion over the past ten years in solar energy research and development, including the ill-fated Solyndra Initiative that filed for bankruptcy earlier in 2011.

In the energy community, PV electricity has long been viewed as a highly promising energy alternative to traditional high carbon electrical sources. However, PV electricity costs much more at the current time than traditional energy sources. The next blog will examine further PV costs and why they are so high.