Boost for Home Solar: East Bay Cities Adopt Standardized Permitting

By Charles Burress

Solar companies seeking to help homes plug into the sun are bedeviled by the costly and time-consuming lack of standardization among different cities' approval process.

So for the past three years, Berkeley and the other cities in the East Bay Green Corridor have been working together, along with their partner institutions, including UC Berkeley, to develop a simpler, unified system.

And now they have results. At a press conference Tuesday morning, Aug. 6, the East Bay Green Corridor and the Oakland-based solar company Sungevity will "announce streamlined solar permitting across the 9-city region," Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates' office said Monday.

The news includes not only standardized residential guidelines for the nine East Bay Green Corridor cities but also "innovative structural guidelines that potentially could save up to $3,500 per installation in the state," according to the notice from Bates' office.

The nine Green Corridor cities are:

• Alameda
• Albany
• Berkeley
• El Cerrito
• Emeryville
• Hayward
• Oakland
• Richmond
• San Leandro

The morning press conference at Sungevity's offices will include Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, Berkeley Vice Mayor Linda Maio, El Cerrito City Councilwoman Janet Abelson, Emeryville Councilwoman Jennifer West and representatives from Sungevity, the East Bay Green Corridor the Governor's Office of Business & Economic Development.

The development of standardized residential solar permitting process was identified by the East Bay Green Corridor members in 2010 as "their number one policy priority," Bates' office said.