The 2022 Solar Manufacturing Incubator Funding Opportunity, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO), seeks to develop next-generation solar technologies and strengthen American solar manufacturing. To do so, the prize helps accelerate the commercialization of innovative product ideas that enable continued solar cost reductions, especially in cadmium telluride (CdTe) photovoltaics.
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Problem
In an effort to underground approximately 10,000 miles of power lines in high fire threat districts, PG&E is looking for ways to increase the efficiency and decrease the cost of undergrounding. The current process to obtain permits, approvals, and easements for undergrounding projects is time-consuming, burdensome and requires significant manual effort.
Desired properties
- Ability to aggregate and overlay disparate information for permitting or easements
- Auto-population or streamlined production of necessary permit and/or easement documentation
Specifications
Category 6: Permitting / Easement Facilitation
Problem statement
The existing process of obtaining the necessary permits, approvals and easements for undergrounding projects is burdensome and time-consuming. Depending on the specifics of the project, the permitting process may extend the overall timeline by over a year. The multi-step document preparation process, manual and iterative nature of stakeholder engagement and lack of standardization of design requirements across agencies and jurisdictions all contribute to the lengthy timelines. Given that all projects require some level of permitting, there is an urgent need to improve the process as benefits will be felt across the entire portfolio of work.
Possible approaches
Any solution that would reduce the time taken by permitting process is welcome. Possible approaches to this problem include solutions that help overlay data collected on a geographic information system (GIS) for the easement process, auto-population or streamlined production of necessary permit documentation or any other solution that reduces the level of manual effort required to complete the permitting process.
| Industrywide Market Gap | Potential Solution Category |
|---|---|
| Significant manual effort is required to populate, process and iterate on permit and easement documentation | Pre-population or automated document creation Automated compilation of information from multiple sources |
| Lack of standardized requirements across agencies and jurisdictions | Ability to track or recognize varying document requirements based on location / agency / etc. |
Known approaches not of interest
- Procedural / management solutions are not of interest.
Key success criteria
Required:
- Demonstrated improvement over current state-of-the-art technology
- Decrease in manual effort required to complete permitting / easement process
- Decrease in current timelines required to complete permitting / easement process by 35%
Desired:
- Commercially deployable within 3 years
