US 11,386,512 B2Granted

Systems and methods for generating permit sets

AssigneeSunrun Inc.

InventorsGary Wayne, Charles Buhler, Billy Hinners, John Hovell, Zachary Richard Campau, Jacob Wachman, William Colin Adkison, Chris Bunch

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Abstract

Systems and methods are disclosed for generating permit sets. A rules engine can traverse various requirements of a rules data structure in conjunction with rule settings that define permitting rules in effect for a particular jurisdiction to determine a value for each requirement. Document objects may then be created by combining project inputs with the determined values. A composing engine can receive the document objects and populate one or more page templates with the document objects to create a permit set.

Claims21

Dependent claims

A computing device for automatically generating a jurisdictionally-compliant permit set for a project, comprising:

a processor;
and
a memory comprising:
a rules engine configured to:
receive and store, in the memory, a rules data structure comprising a set of predefined permit requirements per each jurisdiction across a plurality of jurisdictions and organized as a directed acyclic graph comprised of a plurality of branches, wherein
each branch is comprised of a plurality of known orthogonal categories, and
each known orthogonal category is comprised of a set of requirements with values that do not affect values in any of the other orthogonal categories;
receive and store, in the memory, project inputs comprised of project data representative of a solar power system configuration;
determine the solar power system configuration by:
identifying a plurality of vertices from at least one physical obstruction preventing an installation of at least one solar module on a target surface, wherein
each one of the plurality of identified vertices is one alignment point of a plurality of alignment points;
identifying a plurality of alignment axes, wherein
each one of the plurality of identified alignment axes passes through one of the plurality of alignment points;
selecting one alignment axis from the plurality of identified alignment axes;
projecting a plurality of spans onto the target surface, such that
each one of the plurality of projected spans excludes at least one physical obstruction and parallel to the selected alignment axis;
and
populating each one of the plurality of projected spans with a set of solar modules;
and
instruct the processor to traverse each branch of the rules data structure unambiguously in a single pass and generate at least one document object based on the project inputs and a set of predefined permit requirements for the project;
and
a composing engine configured to:
receive the at least one document object;
receive and store, in the memory, at least one page template comprised of regions corresponding to the at least one document object;
and
cause the processor to populate the regions with the at least one document object.

23 more elements

A computer-implemented method for generating jurisdictionally-compliant permit set for a project, comprising:

receiving, using a processor of a computing device, a rules data structure comprising a set of predefined permit requirements per each jurisdiction across a plurality of jurisdictions and organized as a directed acyclic graph comprising a plurality of branches, wherein
each branch comprises a plurality of known orthogonal categories, and
each known orthogonal category comprises a set of requirements with values that do not affect values in any of the other orthogonal categories;
receiving project inputs comprised of project data representative of a solar power system configuration;
determining the solar power system configuration by:
identifying a plurality of vertices from at least one physical obstruction preventing an installation of at least one solar module on a target surface, wherein
each one of the plurality of identified vertices is one alignment point of a plurality of alignment points;
identifying a plurality of alignment axes, wherein
each one of the plurality of identified alignment axes passes through one of the plurality of alignment points;
selecting one alignment axis from the plurality of identified alignment axes;
projecting a plurality of spans onto the target surface, such that
each one of the plurality of projected spans excludes at least one physical obstruction and parallel to the selected alignment axis;
and
populating each one of the plurality of projected spans with a set of solar modules;
and
traversing each branch of the rules data structure unambiguously in a single pass and generate at least one document object based on the project inputs and a set of predefined permit requirements for the project;
receiving the at least one document object;
receiving at least one page template comprised of regions corresponding to the at least one document object;
and
populating the regions with the at least one document object.

17 more elements

A computer-implemented method for maintaining permit data, comprising:

enumerating, using a processor of a computing device, a set of predefined permit requirements per each jurisdiction across a plurality of jurisdictions and corresponding predefined values for each requirement of the set of predefined permit requirements;
organizing, using the processor, the set of predefined permit requirements into a rules data structure organized as a directed acyclic graph comprising a plurality of branches for an unambiguous traversal across each branch in a single pass by the processor configured with a rules engine, wherein
each branch comprises a plurality of known orthogonal categories, and
each known orthogonal category comprises a set of requirements with the values that do not affect values in any of the other orthogonal categories;
and
receiving, through an input/output (I/O) device, a set of rules for a particular project with a solar power system configuration;
determining the solar power system configuration by:
identifying a plurality of vertices from at least one physical obstruction preventing an installation of at least one solar module on a target surface, wherein
each one of the plurality of identified vertices is one alignment point of a plurality of alignment points;
identifying a plurality of alignment axes, wherein
each one of the plurality of identified alignment axes passes through one of the plurality of alignment points;
selecting one alignment axis from the plurality of identified alignment axes;
projecting a plurality of spans onto the target surface, such that
each one of the plurality of projected spans excludes at least one physical obstruction and parallel to the selected alignment axis;
and
populating each one of the plurality of projected spans with a set of solar modules;
and
editing, using the processor, the rules data structure upon detecting each one of:
a new permit requirement;
a new value for corresponding to a predefined permit requirement;
and
a change in the predefined value corresponding to a predefined permit requirement.

19 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.