Mike Jacobs, senior energy analyst of the Union of Concerned Scientist's Climate and Energy Program, alerts us to the good news of solar energy grid parity in his article
How Much Does Rooftop Solar Power Cost? Grid Parity Here or Coming in More Than Half of U.S. States. Even without considering state incentives, UCS estimates that with federal tax credits and financing, rooftop solar energy generation has already reached grid parity in 11 states, including many in the northeast, due to higher-than-average electricity rates.
UCS estimates that with rapid declines in the cost of panels and installations, homes in 11 states plus the District of Columbia can use a federal tax credit and financing to make electricity cheaper than they buy it. Seventeen more states are within three years of this tipping point. ...
How do we reach that conclusion? We start with two National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) analyses of break-even for an investment in PV (solar photovoltaic) panels compared with paying the residential rate for electricity. We picked through the NREL studies as we were producing our own update on the rise of solar energy. In their analysis, NREL assessed the available sunshine, projected current and future local electricity prices escalating 0.5% per year, and included financing and federal tax incentives to determine what the cost of solar (in dollars per watt) would need to be to reach break-even.
NREL’s analysis (and therefore ours) is conservative in some important ways:
* No state or local incentives are used. Including existing state tax incentives available in 45 states, or other local support for solar generation would lower the break-even cost for a residential PV system (net present value).
* Some utilities have an optional time-of-use rate structure that also would improve the economics of residential solar. The benefits of this can be seen in this analysis.
* Also not included in our take on the NREL numbers is a price on carbon, which would recognize a value of avoiding emissions.
Jacobs reports these findings are consistent with similar conclusions from Deutsche Bank and NRG.
Is that a rooster I hear crowing? Why no, its a HoundDog! But either way, we can be sure the sun is rising on rooftop solar energy in America.
