In addition, solar installations reduce the need for costly investments in power distribution and transmission throughout the year. First and foremost, solar installations help limit the need to generate power at centralized fossil fuel plants. Solar adds value to the grid in several ways. These benefits fall into two main categories: benefits to the grid and all of the energy customers who depend on it, and benefits to society as a whole. A new study from Environment America Research and Policy Center and Frontier Group, The True Value of Solar: Measuring The Benefits of Rooftop Solar Power, lays out the many benefits that rooftop solar panels deliver beyond the household beneath them. How exactly to define the value of rooftop solar energy is a question that policymakers, regulators and utilities have been grappling with since the dawn of distributed solar power generation. With solar panels churning out power from his roof, he could do his part to combat climate change and reduce harmful air pollution by generating clean renewable energy for his family and sharing any extra with the community. Glowing with pride, he told me how the those new panels would pay for themselves in no time at all, given the smaller electricity bills he anticipated.īut it was clear that he was most excited about becoming a solar power producer for a whole set of other reasons. My own first encounter with solar energy came when my neighbor installed a set of panels on his rooftop. That’s especially true when it comes to solar energy, since the benefits extend far beyond our own homes. We often define the value of something, including our clean energy investments, through a very limited cost-benefit analysis: What are my expenses related to this new thing, and how much money does it save me directly? But such a narrow analysis doesn’t capture the holistic value of much of anything.
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