[fsavard2]

I'm not at all knowledgeable about the solar industry, but I'm curious: how would software reduce the "soft" costs described in that third link (NREL)? It seems to me to be a bunch of costs related to the actors involved, and I don't see how software would help with that. Also, do you have examples of such software?

[diafygi]

Sure! My startup, UtilityAPI.com, is an example of one that is targeting customer acquisition soft costs (10% of total installed cost). When you want to write a proposal for someone thinking about going solar, you need their utility usage and billing history. Collecting that data is currently a very time consuming and painful process, so not only do you spend a lot of man-hours on it, you also lose a huge portion of your funnel at this step.

We are building software that automates that utility data collection process, so solar companies can just bake it into their online forms/apps/internal tools. We estimate we can shave 5-10% off the installed price of solar due to time savings and increased conversion. The Department of Energy agreed and recently awarded us with $25k to build SDKs for our API (with the opportunity for $100k more in May)[1].

[1]: http://catalyst.energy.gov/

[fsavard2]

Ok I see, you're saying that hidden away in the various strata in that graph are, e.g., process inefficiencies which software can eat away. I was naively looking for something that would solve many categories at once, and being an outsider I think of solar as mostly hardware (like you said). Thanks for the answer.