NC Workshop on Planning, Regulating, Permitting & Inspection Helps Local Governments
More than 50 local government officials attended a free, day-long workshop in Mooresville, North Carolina on July 30, to learn about solar zoning codes and ways to improve their solar permitting processes. The Centralina Council of Governments hosted the workshop.
IREC solar permitting/inspection experts, Sky Stanfield and Erica Schroeder McConnell of Keyes, Fox & Wiedman LLP, shared best practices and checklists that help improve and streamline the permitting process for the local governments, installers and their customers. Alex Winn, The Solar Foundation, covered solar codes and standards in North Carolina, paying special attention to achieving regulatory goals and developing appropriate ordinances and enforcement.
“During our discussions at the end of our talk, a number of attendees acknowledged that there were areas where their permitting process could use improvement,” said Stanfield. “We’re looking forward to follow-up communications to help them with more one-on-one technical support.
Tommy Cleveland of NC Clean Energy Technology Center (NCETC) and John Morrison of Strata Solar delivered a comprehensive overview of solar development in NC and shared some of the best local practices and key resources, such as the NC template solar ordinance.
Both the Centralina COG and the Solar Outreach Partnership will be available on an on-going basis to provide that extra one-on-one technical assistance to city and county officials interested in pursuing changes to their solar codes and standards, and/or solar permitting processes.
The workshop was co-organized by U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Solar Outreach Partnership and the Centralina Council of Governments. For more information about the Partnership or the one-on-one technical assistance, contact [email protected].
Presentation slides here.
