Rooftop Solar Could Power 20% of D.C. and Save Ratepayers Money

[kristopher]

Rooftop Solar Could Power 20% of D.C. and Save Ratepayers Money
By John Farrell
August 31, 2011


For many years the citizens of Washington, D.C. struggled for the basic right to elect their own leaders. In 2011, they should use their political home rule to maximize the economic benefits of local renewable energy with “electricity home rule.”

Currently, residents and businesses in Washington spend over $1.5 billion dollars a year on electricity. According to a study of D.C.’s energy dollars by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, 90 percent of that amount (largely unchanged since the 1979 study) – $1.4 billion – leaves the city.

...In its recently published atlas of state renewable energy potential, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR) found that the District of Columbia could generate 19 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar PV systems. That’s $267 million spent on electricity bills that could be kept locally.

But maximizing local electricity generation with rooftop solar has enormous additional economic benefits. To fill District roofs with solar panels, residents would need to install just over 1,800 megawatts (MW) of rooftop solar. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) estimates that every megawatt of solar generates $240,000 in additional economic activity, making the economic value of maximizing solar energy self-reliance close to $432 million. ...

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/blog/post/2011/08/rooftop-solar-could-power-20-of-d-c-and-save-ratepayers-money?cmpid=SolarNL-Wednesday-August31-2011

The article continues on to point out that the economic stimulus 'multiplier effect' was 1.5X - 3.4X. Does anyone recall the numbers associated with most of the programs in the stimulus bill?

[William769]

1. What about all the hot air they have?

Surely that could power the whole eastern seaboard!

[MineralMan]

2. Until you can show the "residents" that there is an acceptable

payback time for those rooftop solar installations, they will not install them. It is that simple. Right now, the payback time is still too long. Until that changes, due to production economies or serious enough tax credits that it makes no sense not to do it, this will not occur.

The competition for who gets the limited dollars of the average person is far too stiff for rooftop solar to even play in the game. I wish it were not so, but that is the fact. I don't know about you, but I don't have the money to spend on solar for my roof. If I did, I'd spend it tomorrow. I have other priorities that simply have to get paid for first.

[kristopher]

3. It isn't payback time that is the fundamental problem

The problem is that under current policies in most areas, the benefits accrue to the utilities and not the purchasers. For example, during peak periods the wholesale value of a delivered kilowatthour can be as high as $3.00; yet most solar reimbursement programs simply provide the homeowner a 1:1 kwh reduction in their bill (value= about $0.10). This makes the payback time a sympton, not the actual illness.

That's an example, there are other policy issues involved that protect the established structure at the expense of home owner/business owner choice.