GridPass

Idea

A bolt-on tracker that catches utility interconnection application rejections before they happen and tells small solar installers exactly which applications are stuck. GridPass gives office staff at small residential and small-commercial solar installers a per-utility pre-submission checklist plus a cross-utility status dashboard with automatic overdue alerts, so they stop losing weeks (and cash flow) to avoidable resubmission cycles. It sits alongside whatever CRM or spreadsheet the installer already uses instead of requiring a full platform switch.

Market gap

Getting a permit from the local building department (AHJ) is now fast. NREL's SolarApp+ has cut AHJ permit review from as many as 20 business days to same-day for participating jurisdictions. But that only solves half the pipeline. The utility interconnection agreement, a separate approval that runs in parallel and grants Permission to Operate (PTO), is the step that now sits on the critical path. Major California utilities average 4 to 8 weeks for PTO in 2025, and several Southeast and Mid-Atlantic utilities publish 45 to 75 business-day review windows for residential applications. Industry coverage of the process consistently reports that a large share of first-round applications get kicked back for correctable errors (mismatched file naming, incomplete modeling data, missing single-line diagram details), and each resubmission round adds another 6 to 8 weeks.

PTO is usually the payment milestone: it is what unlocks the customer's or lender's final draw to the installer. A stuck application does not just delay a customer's system, it starves the installer's cash. That dynamic sits underneath the wave of 2024 to 2025 residential solar bankruptcies (Titan Solar Power, SunPower, Sunnova) where reporting points to financing and milestone-payment delays as a contributing factor, not just weak demand.

Right now, small installers handle this with a spreadsheet, a shared inbox, and whoever remembers to check the utility portal. The tools that exist either outsource the whole application for a per-project fee, or bundle a status column inside a full construction-management platform switch. Nobody sells a narrow, cheap, utility-rules-aware pre-flight check that a small back office can adopt in a day.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up. Solar Cost By State counts 10,285+ residential solar installer companies in the US, sourced from SEIA member listings, the NABCEP certification database, and BBB registrations.

• TAM: 10,285 installers x $2,400 average annual contract value (a $200/month blended tier) = approximately $24.7 million.
• SAM: installers doing enough grid-tied residential and small-commercial volume to need active tracking across multiple utilities, estimated at half the total (many listed installers are very small, part-time, or single-utility operators with no real tracking problem) = approximately 5,140 installers x $2,400 = approximately $12.3 million.
• SOM: a realistic 3-year capture of 3 percent of SAM = approximately 154 installers x $2,400 = approximately $370,000 ARR. That is a credible initial wedge to prove the per-utility rules engine before expanding into the commercial and C&I segment, where contract values are higher.

Monetization strategy

Flat monthly SaaS subscription, billed by number of active interconnection applications in flight rather than by seat, matching what this buyer already expects from tools like Projul. No per-user fees so office staff, estimators, and crew leads can all log in without inflating the bill. Customers keep paying because every open application is a dollar of unpaid final draw sitting behind a utility queue, and losing visibility into that queue is the actual failure mode being sold against.

Pricing strategy

• Starter, $149/month: up to 15 active applications. Entry point for a single-crew installer.
• Growth, $349/month: up to 50 active applications, SMS alerts included. This is the anchor tier, sized for the installer doing 150 to 400 residential jobs a year.
• Scale, $699/month: unlimited active applications, CSV export automation, and a webhook so status changes can push into an existing CRM.

Anchored well under Projul's $4,788/year entry tier, because GridPass is deliberately narrower: it does not replace estimating, scheduling, or invoicing.

Lead magnet

A free, no-signup Utility Interconnection Rejection Checker. The installer picks their state and utility from a dropdown, answers a short form about the system (size, inverter brand, whether a single-line diagram and load calc are ready), and instantly gets a pass/fail checklist of that utility's most common rejection triggers, pulled from the same rules database the paid product runs on.

Social proof that the problem exists

• Multiple active job postings for dedicated "Interconnection Coordinator" and "Interconnection Specialist" roles at solar companies, including GreenLancer's own careers page (https://www.greenlancer.com/careers-page/solar-interconnection-coordinator) and listings on Indeed, ZipRecruiter, Glassdoor, and SimplyHired. Companies are hiring full-time humans just to manually chase utility status, a headcount cost a small installer cannot easily absorb.
• The 2024 to 2025 wave of residential solar bankruptcies, including Titan Solar Power's Chapter 7 filing in June 2024 and Sunnova's Chapter 11 filing in June 2025, reported by Utility Dive (https://www.utilitydive.com/news/residential-solar-installer-sunnova-files-for-bankruptcy-plans-to-sell-and/750387/) with financing and milestone-payment strain cited as a contributing cause.
• Projul's own solar contractor product page names the exact pain directly: "the lack of visibility into where applications stand when office staff submit interconnection applications" (https://projul.com/industries/solar-contractor/). That is vendor evidence the problem is real, even though Projul only addresses it as one tracking column inside a full platform switch.
• A cottage industry of outsourced engineering marketplaces exists specifically around this bottleneck: GreenLancer (https://www.greenlancer.com/pv-interconnection), WattMonk (https://www.wattmonk.com/service/permitting/), and others sell per-project interconnection paperwork services. That business model only exists because installers routinely cannot get it right, or done, in-house.

Competitors

• GreenLancer: a marketplace of licensed engineers offering stamped permit plan sets and PV interconnection application preparation, billed per project. It outsources the work rather than helping in-house staff self-serve.
• WattMonk: markets itself as an AI-powered solar engineering partner covering permitting, PTO, and interconnection as an outsourced service line, same per-project model as GreenLancer.
• Projul: an all-in-one solar contractor management platform, $4,788 to $14,388 per year with no per-user fee, used by 5,000+ contractors (G2 rating 4.9/5). It bundles interconnection status tracking as one module inside a full CRM covering site surveys, estimating, crew scheduling, permits, and invoicing.
• ANB Systems' eTRACK+ (now a DNV company): interconnection workflow software, but sold to utilities to run their own review queue. Installers only get a status view if their specific utility happens to have adopted it, and cannot buy it directly.
• GridUnity, GridAstra, and Nira Energy: real interconnection software companies, but built for utility-scale developers, ISOs, and utilities managing transmission-level queues. A different customer and a different process from small residential and small-commercial rooftop interconnection with a local distribution utility.

What competitors offer now

Outsourced marketplaces (GreenLancer, WattMonk) do the paperwork for the installer, for a fee, on every project. That works but caps margin and keeps the installer dependent on an outside vendor for something they could own once it is systematized. Projul gives visibility, a dashboard column showing an application is overdue, but no utility-specific rules engine that catches the errors before submission, and it only comes bundled inside a full operations platform switch most small shops are not ready to make. Utility-side and utility-scale tools (eTRACK+, GridUnity, GridAstra, Nira) never reach a small installer's desk at all.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Ship the narrow tool, not the platform. A maintained, per-utility requirements and rejection-trigger database, built from published interconnection rule books (California's Rule 21 tariffs for PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E, plus the equivalent rule sets for other high-volume investor-owned utilities, munis, and co-ops), that flags likely rejection triggers before an installer submits. Pair it with a cross-utility dashboard and automatic SLA-breach alerts so nothing sits silently in a queue. Enter through the free Rejection Checker instead of a sales-assisted platform demo, and stay explicitly a bolt-on: never ask an installer to move their CRM, scheduling, or invoicing off whatever they already use.