14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday, the Department of Energy in the United States rolled out a new project whose goal is to help make it easier for people to switch to powering their homes with the help of sun energy rather than continuing to rely on dirty fuels instead.
The project, dubbed the Rooftop Solar Challenge, is worth $12 million. It boils down to a bunch of specialists' working together to figure out ways to reduce the costs of installing solar panels.
To achieve this, the teams taking part in the Rooftop Solar Challenge are supposed to find ways to lower the so-called soft costs associated with installing solar panels.
“Solar panels, inverters, and other hardware components that make up solar energy systems are more affordable than ever before. It is the ‘soft’ costs of solar – including permitting for installation, interconnection, and maintenance fees – that represent an increasingly large portion of the cost of solar installations,” the US Department of Energy explains on its official website.
“To address this ‘soft’ costs barrier, the Rooftop Solar Challenge brings together local officials, utilities, private industry, nonprofits, and other stakeholders to simplify the solar installation process – from streamlining and standardizing solar permitting for area residents to digitizing many of the administrative steps required,” the Department goes on to say.
According to Think Progress, the teams taking part in this competition are as follows: the City University of New York, the Washington State Department of Commerce, the Clean Energy States Alliance, the Iowa Economic Development Authority, the Mid-America Regional Council, the California Center for Sustainable Energy, Optony Inc, and Broward County, Florida.
The basis for this project were set back in 2011, when the Department of Energy organized a competition intended to find the best solutions for lowering soft costs associated with solar panels installation.
At that time, a total of 46 applications were received from 17 states across the country, and significant progress was made in terms of making solar power more accessible to ordinary folks.
“The eight teams announced today will help further expand the reach of innovative strategies that are making it easier, faster and cheaper for more homeowners and businesses to finance and install solar systems,” the Energy Department explains.
“These awardees will develop and replicate creative solutions that help standardize complicated permitting and interconnection processes that often vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction; facilitate easy, cheaper bulk purchasing; and support user-friendly, fast online applications,” it adds.