Price Adjustment Letter from the CEO

SolarAPP+ is helping communities across the country get more solar on roofs at scale while making it easier for solar installers and homeowners to go solar. In the first five years, the product has been available, it’s helped drive down soft costs, reduced permit processing times by 14 business days on average, improved the safety and compliance of solar and storage projects, and automated mundane permitting tasks—saving local permitting officials more than 15,400 hours (7 years) of staff time in 2023 alone.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has led the first five years of SolarAPP+’s development and deployment. It’s a great example of our national labs testing and supporting an idea to solve a problem as the country looks to speed up the clean energy transition. Now that the idea is proven—and is adding value for both governments and installers — it’s time to transition the product out of the lab and into the non-profit SolarAPP+ Foundation.

As the new CEO of the SolarAPP+ Foundation, I’m so excited for this next chapter of SolarAPP+. There is so much work ahead to streamline our project review software, make it easier for governments and installers alike, tackle more aspects of the project deployment process, and other clean energy technologies that require permitting.

To support this vision, we need to have a sustainable organization that can build to this roadmap and better meet the needs of our partners. This means that SolarAPP+’s pricing model will be adjusted for the first time in its five-year history.

When SolarAPP+ launched in 2019, we were charging the same $25 per project. At that time, we supported a limited number of solar project configurations. Today, we also support home battery storage, main panel upgrades, main breaker derates, and many more configurations of projects, which add complexity to the SolarAPP+ software and the technical support we provide for it.

On Tuesday, September 17th, we’ll adjust our prices per permit as follows:

The decision to increase our prices is not one that we take lightly. We know many clean energy installers are under intense financial pressure today. Our goal as a non-profit is to help drive down the soft costs associated with deploying clean energy projects and to advance the electrification and decarbonization of homes. This price increase will allow us to sustainably manage the SolarAPP+ product and invest in its ability to drive down timelines and reduce much greater soft costs associated with getting projects deployed.

This price adjustment reflects our commitment to maintaining and enhancing SolarAPP+ for the future and ensures that we can continue to deliver on our mission of making clean energy adoption more affordable and efficient. We understand the financial pressures facing our partners in the clean energy industry, and we remain dedicated to supporting you by reducing overall project costs with our software. Together, we will continue to accelerate the transition to a sustainable, electrified future. Thank you for your continued trust and partnership as we embark on this next chapter.

Matthew McAllister

Chief Executive Officer

SolarAPP+ Foundation

[email protected]