In-House vs Outsourced Solar Design: Real Cost Breakdown

The instinct to hire a drafter is reasonable. You want control, you want fast turnarounds, and you want someone who knows your AHJs. The question is whether the maths supports it at your volume.

Start with the fully loaded cost. A mid-level US solar drafter runs roughly $62,000 to $78,000 in salary. Add payroll taxes, benefits, software seats for AutoCAD and a design platform, hardware, and management time, and the loaded figure lands closer to $95,000 to $115,000 per year. At a realistic sustained output of 12 to 16 permit sets per week including revisions, that is $115 to $185 per set before a single overflow week.

Now add the variance. Installer volume is seasonal and lumpy. In a slow month the drafter is paid the same. In a peak month the queue backs up, sales waits on proposals, and installs slip. The cost of a slipped install week is almost always larger than the drafting spend it came from.

Outsourced design changes the shape of the cost, not just the size. You pay per set. Capacity flexes with your pipeline. There is no seat licence, no PTO coverage problem, and no single point of failure when the drafter is out.

Where in-house genuinely wins: very high, very stable volume with deeply idiosyncratic internal standards, or a business that sells engineering as its own product. Where outsourcing wins: everyone else, and particularly anyone whose queue swings by more than 30 percent month to month.

The honest framing is not cheaper labour. It is converting a fixed cost into a variable one, and buying back the weeks your team currently loses to the drafting queue.