Rooftop solar can't be economically efficient without subsidies of some sort. How could it outcompete the economies of scale of putting an extra 10 panels in a utility-scale installation 50 miles away?
SREC is one such subsidy - which looks enormous, twice as big as the actual retail cost of the electricity! - and the author also mentions a federal tax credit for 26% of the cost.
Note that net metering is yet another subsidy. Try to sell electricity on commercial terms at "we will provide you with energy when it's sunny and withdraw when we want, at the same price" and see how quickly you get laughed out of the room. Granted, in a climate like DC peak usage (AC) is pretty close to peak solar production so it's not quite as bad as that, but batteries cost order-of-magnitude the same as solar panels, and this is asking the grid to serve as a giant battery.
All these subsidies have clearly had a positive effect - rooftop solar is better than none at all, and perhaps there are some secondary benefits in job creation, environmental awareness, etc. But this is one area where the tax breaks would have been more efficiently spent enriching big businesses rather than sent directly to middle-class home owners.
> Rooftop solar can't be economically efficient without subsidies of some sort. How could it outcompete the economies of scale of putting an extra 10 panels in a utility-scale installation 50 miles away?
By not using expensive land (since it's on top of a building that existed anyways).
SREC is one such subsidy - which looks enormous, twice as big as the actual retail cost of the electricity! - and the author also mentions a federal tax credit for 26% of the cost.
Note that net metering is yet another subsidy. Try to sell electricity on commercial terms at "we will provide you with energy when it's sunny and withdraw when we want, at the same price" and see how quickly you get laughed out of the room. Granted, in a climate like DC peak usage (AC) is pretty close to peak solar production so it's not quite as bad as that, but batteries cost order-of-magnitude the same as solar panels, and this is asking the grid to serve as a giant battery.
All these subsidies have clearly had a positive effect - rooftop solar is better than none at all, and perhaps there are some secondary benefits in job creation, environmental awareness, etc. But this is one area where the tax breaks would have been more efficiently spent enriching big businesses rather than sent directly to middle-class home owners.