Why smartphone cameras could unlock cheaper, faster rooftop solar

Chaz Weatherford has a busy schedule. On a typical workday, the solar inspection technician for major U.S. rooftop solar company Freedom Forever drives to eight or nine homes across southern Arizona, checking to make sure their newly installed solar systems are safely configured and ready to turn on. Sometimes it’s hard to stay on schedule — especially when he has to wait around for hours for a city or county inspector to show up to review his work.

But at homes within the jurisdiction of Pima County, Arizona, Weatherford doesn’t have to wait very long. That’s because the county is one of a growing number doing remote virtual inspections, which cuts the time its inspectors need to approve home solar projects from hours to minutes.

Weatherford uses his smartphone camera to take photos and videos of everything on his inspection checklist: a home’s main electrical panel and the breakers within it, the disconnect switch, the electrical meter, and all the wires and conduits connecting them. Then, he sends those digital records to the county’s inspection office.

Soon after, ​“we get an email back saying if we’ve passed or not — and if not, there are instructions on how to fix it,” he said.

That’s good for Freedom Forever, for the homeowners who are installing solar, and for the county inspectors, he said.

Solar, battery, and home electrification advocates say the benefits of a virtual inspection make it a no-brainer policy. Any steps that can reduce the cost of rooftop solar are critical right now. Utility bills are rising nationwide, making home solar especially useful to households. But in the U.S., these systems are far more expensive than they are in most other countries. It doesn’t help that the Trump administration scrapped federal tax credits for rooftop solar last year.

Right now, just a few states have efficient permitting practices for rooftop solar and home battery projects, according to a recent report produced by advocacy nonprofits Environment America and Frontier Group.

While the report names streamlining installations via third-party and remote inspections as one of the top reforms, the approach is used by only a relative handful of the more than 40,000 county, city, and local permitting jurisdictions in the U.S.

Many of those jurisdictions allowing the remote reviews are in California, which was also the first state to pass an instant-solar-permitting mandate. Arizona, Florida, and Texas also have a significant number of jurisdictions that have adopted virtual inspections; New York state’s NY-Sun solar and storage subsidy program requires them as a follow-up to on-site local inspectors.

The number of jurisdictions using the technique is likely to grow. A half dozen states have advanced or are considering bills to reform solar and battery permitting this year, according to Permit Power, a nonprofit that advocates for permitting reform for residential clean energy. Several of those bills would impose mandates if passed, and some would offer state support for jurisdictions that adopt virtual inspection.

“You’re seeing a real movement across both plug-in solar and more traditional solar and batteries to knock down the barriers and red tape that get in the way of American families buying and installing those systems,” said Nick Josefowitz, CEO of Permit Power.

Making virtual inspection a reality

The old adage is as true for solar permitting as it is for anything else: Time is money.

That’s why remote virtual inspections can add up to big savings, according to an exhaustive report from the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a nonprofit clean-energy advocacy group. Using technology for virtual inspections can reduce costs by more than $30,000 per inspector annually, according to IREC, cutting expenses on vehicles and fuel as well as enabling inspectors to do roughly three times as many inspections per day.

Daniel Ice, a deputy director at Pima County’s development services department, certainly sees the savings on the ground. His office started doing virtual inspections for residential air-conditioning installations more than a decade ago, and has gradually expanded it to more tasks.

“We’re a large county — our inspectors were driving up to 150 miles per day,” he said. ​“This saved on our vehicle and fuel costs — and we could do more inspections.”

Like most building inspection departments, Pima County has more work than it has employees to do it, Ice said. Spending less time on everyday home solar inspections ​“freed up the planners to work on more complicated projects.”

Permit Power and other advocates want Pima County to become the rule — not the exception.

Statewide bills like Maryland’s are a good start to making that happen, said Erin Kelly, vice president of residential operations at Lumina Solar, an installer based in the state.

Maryland’s legislation will require counties to adopt online solar permitting by mid-2027, and it includes requirements that counties that can’t meet five-day turnarounds for these permit applications by mid-2028 ​“must offer a remote inspection option that provides inspection within five business days of a request.”