LBNL's Ryan Wiser quoted in The Motley Fool

California is About to Give SolarCity a Helping Hand

According to the California Assemblyman Al Muratsuchi it can take 65 days to install solar panels, "of which 64 of those days are spent wading through the local bureaucracy to get the necessary permits and approvals." That's why he sponsored a bill that will streamline the process and make installing solar on homeowners' rooftops quicker and more affordable.

Reducing costs
SolarCity, the country's largest solar installer with a 29% share of the U.S. market, has been focusing as much on growth as it has on reducing costs. For example, at the end of 2012, it cost SolarCity roughly $3.16 a watt to install a solar-power system on a customer's roof. Scale and increased efficiency allowed it to reduce that cost by nearly 30% to $2.29 a watt in the second quarter.

The company's current goal is to get its costs down to just $1.90 a watt by 2017. That would represent a 17% improvement from June, a massive 40% lower than its costs at the end of 2012. The math that goes into this cost includes direct expenses like solar panels, indirect ones like fleet vehicles, and so-called soft costs like labor and, oh, permitting...

Ryan Wiser of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that a cost reduction of up to $1,000 is possible for "a typically sized residential system." That's a notable savings. According to Sunrun, an installer that operates in California and other states, a rooftop solar-power system can cost anywhere from $18,000-$40,000 depending on size. Permitting makes up between $3,000-$6,000 of that cost.

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