Texas can barely keep up with growing demands for electricity driven by our state’s booming population and the extreme temperatures resulting from climate change. Yet we make it more difficult than it needs to be for homeowners to take stress off the grid by installing solar panels to power their own homes. Red tape and delays imposed by municipalities, utilities, and homeowners associations get in the way.Our company, Freedom Solar, has thousands of customers with solar panels installed on rooftops waiting for interconnection across the state, with average delays ranging from five weeks in Austin and the Dallas–Fort Worth area to more than four months in Houston and San Antonio. Extrapolating from data gathered by the consultancy Wood Mackenzie, we estimate that Texas likely has more than one gigawatt of solar power awaiting approvals behind a pitiful web of unnecessary…
Let’s Cut the Red Tape That’s Holding Back Solar Energy in Texas – Texas Monthly
