When rooftop solar installation statistics are examined and significant variance are identified, one might ask why there are more rooftop installations in some U.S. states than others. To answer this question, the SunShot Initiative of the United States Department of Energy commissioned NREL researchers to analyze relevant statistics and detailed case studies.
Their task is to determine and understand why solar market policies in some U.S. states have been successful and were able to have higher distributed rooftop solar installation.
The rapid fall of solar PV prices is often construed as the main reason for the popularity of solar in any market and though this assumption may be true, it is only part of the reason. If the sole driving factor is economics, then all states would have experienced the same boom in solar installations.
Rooftop solar installation not solely driven by cost
But as the figures show, some have higher installations than others. Falling prices of solar systems has no direct correlation with its rise in popularity.
High rooftop solar installation numbers depend more on a host of policy and contextual factors within a particular state. The information gathered by the study will help government policy makers understand the relationship between solar installations and policies and to identify the issues that makes it difficult for the system to work.
Policy makers work to identify what motivates to consumers
The time-dependent relationships between the success of solar markets and policy implementations were evaluated by the NREL’s Integrated Applications Group. They used historical data for installed capacity of solar PV systems in many states in the country.
The main contention of the report is that a combination of localized strategies and foundation policies will encourage more rooftop solar installation in any state.
Elizabeth Doris, a technical manager for Policy and Technical Assistance at NREL, and a co-author of the report said that the states which have implemented a combination of three or four foundational and market-enabling policies have been mostly successful in creating robust solar markets.
The authors of the report have examined both policy and non-policy factors that affected local solar markets in one state.
Net metering and interconnection most important in high consumption of solar
The researchers found that with regards to policy, there were two fundamental blocks which are really necessary to encourage solar markets in any state. They are net metering and interconnection.
Net metering policies define the compensation consumers receive for supplying electricity from their solar panels to the grid. Interconnection policies decide how a solar PV system should be connected to the grid.
If these two factors are present in any state, they will encourage the installations of more PV systems. Both of these factors empower the consumer and present a two-way connection with the grid.
This set-up is also less expensive to the government because it is actually a non-financial incentive to spur growth of the solar market.
Aside from these two factors, there are also non-policy factors that affect the growth of solar power installations. These include community awareness in renewable energy and its efficiency, the cost of competing grid electricity, and the insulation potential of the locality.
