l'Actualité du Solaire

Usually a summary analysis of the costs and benefits of solar electricity is carried out: what are the immediate savings? But solar provides much more than just renewable energy.

Roof-mounted panels produce energy; they help to combat climate change,

reduce air pollution for the owner and the community.

The study by Environment America Research and Policy Centre and Frontier Group lists the benefits of residential PV installations:

Impact on the grid Residential installation limits the need to generate electricity in centralized fossil fuel power plants. It reduces investment in the distribution and transmission of energy throughout the year. These avoided costs are particularly important in summer when demand for electricity increases due to air conditioning, when solar panels are most productive.

This avoids the need for peak load power plants to meet demand. The Carnegie Mellon and NREL study indicates that solar resources distributed in California have saved $650 million between 2013 and 2015 by reducing demand on the grid at peak times, resulting in lower prices throughout the day.

Solar energy can also reduce price volatility by diversifying energy sources. Because they generate electricity where it is needed, solar panels can improve the efficiency of the grid by reducing the amount of energy lost during distribution and transmission.

Residential solar power increases the reliability and strength of the grid during natural disasters such as floods and hurricanes, as was seen during the hurricane in Puerto Rico.

Societal impact When solar panels are installed on roofs, the whole population benefits from the reduction of global warming emissions. Carbon emissions from our current energy system cost the United States billions of dollars in economic and social damage every year. Emissions-free solar energy therefore represents a huge savings opportunity. Solar energy also reduces emissions of hazardous air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, mercury and particulate matter that are harmful to public health, reducing the number of illnesses and deaths associated with them.

Finally, solar energy reduces the need for fracking, coal mining and other parts of the life cycle of fossil fuels that have harmful consequences and costs borne by all.

If the full benefits of solar energy were to be calculated, it would be necessary to include it in energy tariffs and reduce the cost of its installation for solar roof owners. The cost of solar measures, such as net metering, is justified. These policies stimulate interest in owning residential solar installations: of the ten US states that generated the most solar energy per capita on a small scale in 2017, eight had a net metering policy.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/shout-it-from-the-rooftops-solar-delivers-far-more-than-renewable-energy#gs.y4kkqr

GreenTech Media of August 5

Editor's note To our knowledge, this is the first time that such an advocacy for residential facilities has been formulated. It goes against the policy generally followed to favour large plants.

This justification goes in the direction of evolution: large power plants have been useful for launching mass production and thus bringing down the prices of panels. However, these large power plants require large areas which are almost completely taken away from agricultural production. There is therefore a limit to the extension of these large power plants, which will become more and more apparent, especially in countries with a high density of inhabitants per square kilometre. Therefore, the use of rooftop installations is the solution provided that the price gap between residential installations and large power plants is reduced. This can be achieved by installing solar panels on new buildings, as required in California from January 2020, and by industrialising residential construction.