As states and cities throughout the country embrace the renewable energy transition, setting and committing to 100 percent clean energy targets, one crucial gap remains in ultimately meeting those targets: how do you stretch the production from renewable resources like wind and solar to keep powering the country even when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing? Enter long duration storage, the promising broad category of technologies that can fill this gap.
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Utility energy storage pilot programs: what you need to know
As the costs of solar batteries continue to decline, more and more homeowners are adding energy storage to their solar installations: in California, for instance, one in every twenty solar installations now also includes a solar battery. As utilities become more familiar with the benefits of distributed solar + storage on the grid, from added operational flexibility to decreased electricity demand, several utilities in the Northeast are now offering large incentives for home energy storage pilot programs.
Continue readingSolar incentives for businesses in 2021
It’s not just homeowners that can take advantage of the benefits of solar: commercial and industrial businesses can also participate in the clean energy revolution by installing solar–and storage!–on their properties. In fact, in many cases, the incentives for businesses to invest in solar are even better than they are for homeowners. If you are a business looking to explore your solar options, here are the key incentives to be aware of in 2021.
Continue readingDoes your battery come with its own inverter?
While shopping for storage solutions, it can be hard to break down which products come with an integrated inverter, which will need an additional inverter, and how many boxes will be installed on your wall. This is one of the key factors to pay attention to as you’re comparing storage solutions, as it will impact the overall efficiency and cost of your battery setup, as well as how you integrate it into a solar panel system.
Here’s a breakdown of this info for some of the biggest storage companies in the market today:
Continue readingCorporate renewable energy procurement: an overview
In today’s current era of renewable energy targets, action is not just limited to political entities such as the federal government, states or individual cities. In fact, many corporations are getting in on the act by promoting corporate sustainability programs or contracting directly with renewable energy developers to build solar and wind farms specifically for their company. As the solar and wind industries continue to grow, corporate renewable procurement and targets will play a substantial role in driving renewable energy to greater and greater heights.
Continue readingBonus depreciation: what you need to know
As a business looking to go solar in the US, the best incentives available to you are tax incentives. Between the investment tax credit (ITC)–which works the same for businesses as it does for homeowners–and depreciation benefits at both the state and federal level, you can expect to receive half of what you pay for solar back as tax benefits. While the ITC has been around for a long time, and its success is well documented, bonus depreciation is a newer incentive that can provide nearly as large of a tax benefit as the ITC.
Continue readingRenewable portfolio standards explained
Following the 2018 elections, there was a flurry of state-level action on climate change and clean energy to begin the new year. Outside of proposals at the federal level for a Green New Deal, many states proposed and passed a suite of climate-related legislation, from emission reduction goals to clean energy procurement targets. Perhaps the most common policy instrument for growing clean energy at the state level is the renewable portfolio standard (RPS).
Continue readingUnderstanding time-of-use (TOU) rates
Across the country, utilities are beginning to introduce innovative rate structures for residential energy consumers. These rate structures–from time-of-use rates to demand charges to real-time-pricing–all have a common goal: to incentivize customers to consume energy during times when the cost of generating electricity is cheap, and to disincentive energy consumption when the cost of generating electricity is high. As a result, understanding the ins and outs of a time-of-use rate can help you reduce your monthly cost of energy.
Continue readingThe Green Jobs – Green New York Program
As clean energy policies and programs begin to stack up throughout the country, one major question remains relating to how states will use any revenues collected from policies like a carbon tax. Will they use the money to incentivize growth in renewable energy, to pay for retraining for employees of the fossil fuel industry, to redistribute as a credit to all taxpayers in the state, or for some other purpose altogether? The Green Jobs – Green New York program provides a great case study for a successful, long-lived program that effectively uses the revenue from a carbon tax to further the state’s economic growth and environmental actions.
Continue readingBring your own battery programs: what you need to know in 2021
As solar batteries become more and more popular, individual utilities are beginning to offer rebate and incentive programs to make the economics of adding storage to your solar panel system more favorable. Given that solar batteries are a new product, utilities have begun experimenting with new program designs specific to solar batteries. One of the newest, increasingly common program types is a bring your own battery, or bring your own device, program.
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