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U.S. seeks to speed rooftop solar growth with instant permits:
The Solar Automated Permit Processing (SolarAPP+) platform, developed by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, will be an optional portal for local governments to process permit applications automatically.
Approvals typically take a week or more currently, and permit-related costs can account for about a third of installers' overall costs, DOE said. The software speeds the process up by standardizing requirements, streamlining the application and automating some approvals.
Administration officials said the software will help speed adoption of rooftop solar and achieve President Joe Biden's goal of decarbonizing the U.S. electricity grid by 2035, a key pillar of his plan to address climate change. DOE has said that solar energy will need to be installed at a pace as much as five times faster than it is today to realize that goal.
[...] The portal performs an automatic review of permit applications, approving eligible systems instantly. Complex or ineligible systems are re-routed for additional review.
Local governments will not have to pay for the portal, DOE said. DOE is challenging 125 mayors and local officials to sign up for the SolarAPP tool before the end of the summer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Muad'Dave on Wednesday July 21 2021, @02:20PM (4 children)
Solar installations, particularly those on private dwellings, are known to generate horrific amounts of RF interference. I hope their permitting speed-up doesn't result in the use of even more non-FCC approved/compliant controllers/inverters.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 22 2021, @02:10AM (3 children)
No reason to be so with a decent converter. Aren't there some standards for RF emission in US [cornell.edu]? Or have them been deregulated lately?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 22 2021, @04:40AM
Constructive interference is a bitch. Each part of the system is within those limits, but get a number of them together and you can easily exceed those levels in the right harmonics. Add in some installers that are building it down to a price not installing chokes or taking other mitigation efforts and you can easily get a neighborhood full of noise.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday July 22 2021, @09:42PM (1 child)
There are standards, but they're roundly ignored. The FCC used to require independent testing of devices that use/emit RF, but now allows 'self certification' - that's how many of the non-compliant stuff ends up here. You know all those 433 MHz 'maker' modules that are available everywhere? They're for an ISM band that does not exist in the US, and are generally illegal to operate (they emit too much power and don't have controls on duty cycle that are required by law), yet they're sold everywhere.
As another poster said, installers cut corners by not properly grounding and bonding the parts, and often leave off the filter chokes to cut cost. No one but those of us that use the VLF/HF/MF bands notice. Once anyone gets around to caring (if ever) the installer is long gone.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Thursday July 22 2021, @10:05PM
So "self-regulation". Yeap, this will work, we've seen it in 2008 with the banks and Boeing 747 (as two examples the pop immediately in mind).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford