In a move that solar aficionados find inexplicable and dangerous, the City of San Diego in December upped its solar installation fee, from $93 to $565, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.

San Diego City officials say the inflated cost reflects the actual cost by the city to insure that solar systems are installed in a safe and appropriate manner. The rate increase, they insist, has nothing to do with the city’s general fund.

Still, it’s surprising the city would make such a move, given last year’s study by the Sierra Club in California, which showed a solar permitting fee disparity among California cities of thousasnds of dollars, with the higher fees being a definite turnoff in regard to installing solar and the one thing that could defeat California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Million Solar Roofs goal.

For example, in 2009, solar permitting fees in Los Angeles County were about $1,143, or almost three times as much as in Orange County ($426), Riverside ($404) and San Bernardino ($401).

Once the study was released, Los Angeles County officials hastily backpedaled, dropping fees to $370. But even at their pinnacle, LA County fees were nowhere near the $5,000 that Morgan Hill (California) businessman Bob Kushner paid to install his $140,000 panel solar array in 2005.

In contrast, Arizona – where the communities of Mesa and Gilbert have waived a requirement for building permits for solar installations – representatives, including insurance company actuaries and city officials, are worried that uninspected and unsupervised solar installations may be putting roofs at risk, either from the added weight of the solar panels or from future damage created by the perforations needed to affix solar panels to roofs.

In Colorado, solar installation permits have been set by Senate Bill 117, passed in May of 2008, which limits county or municipality fees to “no more than the lesser of the local government's actual cost to issue a permit, or $500 for a residential application or $1,000 for a nonresidential application”. For all its convoluted language, the bill says you don’t have to pay more than $500 for home-based solar.

In Menominee Falls, Wisconsin, expect to pay a mere $50 for a solar permit, regardless of system size or location. But if you’re trying to find the cost of a solar permit in various other cities across the U.S. via the Internet, forget it, because the information just isn’t there; a situation that Project Permit is attempting to rectify with their survey.

And in some areas, notably Minneapolis, Minnesota, solar permitting fees had to be waived in 2006 order to move forward with a publicly funded solar thermal pilot project, where a handful of low-income homes were found to need structural support before the solar hot water pilot could begin. Fees waived at that time totaled $500 per household.

Of course, the perilous and costly permitting process can be avoided by hiring a solar installation contractor, or entering into a solar lease with a distributed solar energy company like SolarCity. The first allows homeowners to defray the permit costs to some extent, and relieves them of the burden of complex and frustrating paperwork. The second method, leasing, amortizes some costs over the entire term of the lease and puts the entire paperwork aspect in someone else’s lap. In both cases, having someone else deal with city hall is likely worth the extra cost to most homeowners.

What is really needed, though, is a universal permitting rate, applicable from California to Connecticut, and the likelihood of this happening is even greater now that big box retailers like Wal-Mart and Costco have started offering solar panels to do-it-yourselfers.