The California Legislature has unanimously passed a bill that would establish a remote inspection process for home energy projects such as solar, and it now awaits Governor Gavin Newsom's signature.

AB 1738 was authored by Assemblymember Juan Carrillo (D-Palmdale), chair of the Assembly Local Government Committee. If enacted, homeowners or their contractors would be able to request remote inspections for home solar and battery storage, heat pump water heaters, heat pump HVAC systems and new roofs. Cities and counties would administer the program at their discretion.

"Remote inspections save both the homeowner and the building official time," Carrillo said. "Saving money for the homeowner by not having them wait around for an inspector and allowing those inspectors to focus on permitting more complex projects faster."

An analysis by San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research (SPUR), a co-sponsor of AB 1738, found that California contractors generally wait between two and six hours for in-person inspections, which can increase the cost of home upgrades.

The bill builds on California's broader effort to reduce permitting friction for home electrification. State law enacted in 2020 already requires most cities and counties to offer streamlined, automated online permitting for residential solar and energy storage systems, and remote inspections would extend that digitization to the final verification step after work is completed.

Nineteen jurisdictions in California already offer remote inspections for at least some types of work, including Los Angeles County, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Berkeley, Santa Rosa and Placer County. Los Angeles County estimates that 20 to 40% of all its inspections are now conducted remotely, most commonly for water heaters, solar and battery, electrical finals and minor plumbing and mechanical work. AB 1738 would make the option available to every California homeowner while preserving full discretion for inspectors to require in-person inspections when necessary.

"We have an 'existing buildings dilemma' in California. To meet our ambitious climate and wildfire resilience goals, we have thousands of roofs in high-risk wildfire zones to replace and heat pumps to install. Permitting and inspections quietly add time and cost to each project," said Colleen Corrigan, sustainability and resilience policy manager at SPUR, a Bay Area-based public policy organization and co-sponsor of AB 1738. "Remote virtual inspections are a rare opportunity to save money and time for both the homeowner and the building department—it's a win-win."

The California Legislature also passed a bill legalizing plug-in solar that is awaiting Newsom's signature.

The bill text is available at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov.