The utility industry has been waging a spirited campaign against state net metering policies for months (see my earlier post here), arguing that these programs unfairly benefit residential solar users and force new costs onto both non-solar customers and the companies themselves. However, judging by a recent report from the Rocky Mountain Institute, those arguments are largely moot—solar is going to win regardless. The real question, RMI said, is whether the industry is going to continue fighting the last war—or start figuring out how to profit from this new reality.

The RMI report, The Economics of Load Defection (which can be downloaded here), modeled the costs of solar and solar plus batteries and compared them with today’s utility costs and expected cost increases going forward. What they found was eye-opening:

 “Smaller solar-only systems are economic today in three of our five geographies, and will be so for all geographies within a decade.”

The five areas studied by RMI were Westchester, NY, Louisville, KY, San Antonio, TX, Los Angeles, CA and Honolulu, HI. The residential results from the study are shown in the chart below.

Continue reading The Solar Scenario:
 Utilities Can Profit
 By Embracing The Future →

Follow