NREL's SolarTrace

Permitting, Inspection, and Interconnection Data and Analytics

Map highlighting the region around Oakland, California, including nearby cities such as Berkeley, Alameda, Piedmont, Moraga, and San Leandro. Boundaries for Oakland and surrounding municipalities are clearly delineated, with water areas shaded in blue.

Start Anywhere

The SolarTRACE viewer for residential rooftop solar permitting, inspection, and interconnection was developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). While this tool is unaffiliated with the SolarApp Foundation, this data may be extremely valuable for both AHJs and Installers using the SolarApp+ platform. The median timelines presented were calculated from data on over 700,000 residential rooftop PV and over 100,000 PV+storage projects provided by a range of small- to large-scale installers, accounting for 24% of the U.S. residential PV and 33% of the PV+storage markets for the years shown. The underlying data can be downloaded from NREL's data site, here.

Bar chart showing median cycle times (in days) for solar permitting processes (Permit, Interconnection, Inspection) in Oakland for systems sized 11–50 kW, comparing data from 2017 and 2018. The “Inspection” bar is highlighted for 2018 with a tooltip displaying: "Inspection – Oakland city - Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (PG&E): 13.5 days."

At-a-Glance Metrics

Search for any authority having jurisdiction (AHJ) of interest, generally a city or county. The AHJs listed are those with a minimum of 10 permitted projects per year based on installer-provided data. AHJs not listed lacked sufficient data to determine median project timelines. Median permitting and inspection timeline results are shown for the AHJ and can be toggled between the years listed (2017-2023) and project sizes (1-10 and 11-20kW). Also shown are interconnection timelines for all utilities that serve that AHJ, if sufficient data exists. Timelines between AHJs can also be compared by searching additional AHJs.