John Farrell over at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance ILSR dives into PUC filings in Minnesota and comes up with a comparison of the economic benefits of utility-scale and residential roof-top solar projects that shows a far greater economic impact small-scale solar – every million dollars spent on rooftop solar would create 30 times more jobs than $1 million spent on utility-scale solar. The report shines a light on the benefits of residential solar projects that often get ignored by policymakers. Here’s an excerpt from Farrell’s report:
“In late 2020, the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission asked the state’s electric and gas utilities to discuss what infrastructure projects they had in queue that could be accelerated to support the COVID-battered economy. Tucked into a proposal from Xcel Energy, the state’s largest electric company, was a comparison of two proposed solar projects: one, a giant solar array on the site of a closing coal plant; the other, a small collection of rooftop solar projects to serve low-income residents. In a nondescript table was a bombshell revelation about the relative economic benefits of solar at small scale: for every million the utility proposed spending on rooftop solar, it would create 30 times more jobs than $1 million spent on utility-scale solar.
“For every million the utility proposed spending on rooftop solar, it would create 30 times more jobs than $1 million spent on utility-scale solar.”
“Utilities often and erroneously compare the costs of large and small solar to generate electricity, leaving out the delivery costs, not including the cost of large projects (and that small projects don’t pay). Rather, large-scale solar competes with other large-scale power production, and small-scale with other sources that deliver right to the door (or meter) of our homes and businesses. Both types of solar are competitive.
“If it’s not the price that matters in choosing large or small, then the economic impacts matter much more. This tidbit suggests that the more money we invest in small-scale solar, the much larger economic multipliers we’ll see across the economy. It squares with the 30 Million Solar Homes campaign that ILSR co-leads, which has (preliminarily) found that an investment in solar for 1 in 4 American households could great $30 billion per year in energy bill savings, create over 1.7 million jobs, and shift more than 5 percent of total electricity use to the sun.”
The Institute for Local Self-Reliance offers a few values public regulators should consider when evaluating the benefits of distributed solar projects:
Speed — how quickly can they deploy? In general, small-scale renewable energy projects can reach commercial operation faster.
Workforce — Xcel already highlights and ILSR supports the use of using women- and minority-owned businesses, as well as high labor standards for solar projects.
Choice — where possible, customers being served with on-site energy should have a choice of service providers and a choice of ownership
Path dependency — to what extent do proposed projects preclude future developments? For example, do transmission investments reduce the incentive to invest in non-wires alternatives or distributed energy resources for a similar grid impact?
Equity — do programs target economic recovery in a way that addresses the disproportionate impact of COVID on low-income folks and people of color?
Read the full piece at ILSR.org. It is also available on CleanTechnica.com.