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].
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.
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/