Resource Library
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The Law of Solar: A Guide to Business and Legal Issues
“This guide contains insights we have gained from practical experience assisting participants in numerous solar energy projects covering a diverse range of sizes and installations, as well as our experiences serving the U.S. renewable energy industry.”
Categories: Book -
A Guide to Community Shared Solar: Utility, Private, and Nonprofit Project Development
“This guide is a resource for those who want to develop community shared solar projects, from community organizers or solar energy advocates to government officials or utility managers. By exploring the range of incentives and policies while providing examples of operational community shared solar projects, this guide will help communities plan and implement successful energy projects. In addition, by highlighting some policy best practices, this guide suggests changes in the regulatory landscape that could significantly boost community shared solar installations across the nation.”
Categories: Guidebook -
Solar Futures Study
A dramatically larger role for solar in decarbonizing the U.S. electricity system, and energy system more broadly, is within reach, but it is only possible through concerted policy and regulatory efforts as well as sustained advances in solar and other clean energy technologies.
Categories: Report -
Affordable and Accessible Solar for All: Barriers, Solutions, and On-Site Adoption Potential
“We begin this Solar Future Studies report with a review of the market and regulatory barriers to low-income solar access and affordability, and we summarize current solutions to those challenges (Section 2). In Section 3, we model future low-income on-site solar adoption, using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) dGen model. We expand existing dGen capabilities by creating new agent types by income class, building type (single-family and multifamily), and tenure (renter and owner). […]”
Categories: Technical Report -
On the Path to Sunshot: Executive Summary
Solar technology, solar markets, and the solar industry have changed dramatically over the past five years. Cumulative U.S. solar deployment has increased more than tenfold, while solar’s levelized cost of energy (LCOE) has dropped by as much as 65% (Figure 1). As a result, today the solar industry is about 70% of the way towards achieving the Initiative’s 2020 goals. New challenges and opportunities have emerged as solar has become much more affordable, and we have learned many lessons as solar technologies have been deployed at increasing scale in the United States and abroad. The On the Path to SunShot series explores the remaining challenges to realizing widely available, cost-competitive solar in the United States.
Categories: Study -
Emerging Issues and Challenges in Integrating High Levels of Solar into the Electrical Generation and Transmission System
This report examines several aspects of how the bulk power system (consisting of traditional generators and the high-voltage transmission network) may need to evolve to accommodate the increased PV penetration resulting from achievement of the SunShot cost targets.
Categories: Report -
The Role of Advancements in Solar Photovoltaic Efficiency, Reliability, and Costs
The authors of this report envision solar-energy cost reductions through lower PV module and balance-of-system (BOS) costs as well as improved system efficiency and reliability. After reviewing the recent history of PV price reductions, we demonstrate that numerous combinations of PV improvements could help complete the path to SunShot’s solar LCOE goals. This range of possibilities is created by the tradeoffs among key metrics like module price, efficiency, and degradation rate as well as system price and lifetime. For example, high module efficiency is important but probably not sufficient on its own to meet the aggressive LCOE goals. System reliability (lower degradation rates, longer system lifetimes) might be equally important.
Categories: Report -
Advancing Concentrating Solar Power Technology, Performance, and Dispatchability
Concentrating solar power (CSP) is well on the path to reaching the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative goal of 6 cents/kWh by 2020. In this report, we revisit the original plan for reaching this objective and identify factors related to the market and the technology that have changed.
Categories: Report -
The Promise and Perils of Renewable Energy on Tribal Lands
This Article analyzes the rationale for and substance of ITEDSA the most significant federal law relating to renewable energy on tribal lands-and identifies ongoing challenges in the way the United States approaches renewable energy infrastructure siting on tribal lands.
Categories: ArticleTags: Policy & Regulations