Friday Quiz: Is the tough real estate market affecting solar PV installations?
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You already know all the bad news from the real estate sector, but what about the solar power flowing through the real estate?
Quiz yourself (or an unsuspecting colleague…) on this factoid, reported in the latest issue of SolarToday magazine.
Question 1: Solar photovoltaic installations across the US grew 65% last year. But, which real estate sector has more installed solar PV systems?
a. Residential?
b. Or, commercial?
Question 2: Why?
(Don’t cheat)
Answer:
Nearly 19,000 homes and businesses connected to the grid in 2008. But, while residential installations grew by 34 percent, non-residential installations more than doubled.
Why?
Incentives shaped market growth.
2008 US P.V. installations grew 65 percent over 2007 to nearly 340 megawatts (!). Since 2005, the installed capacity of solar PV has more than tripled.
During 2008, the federal ITC was capped at $2,000 for residential installations, but uncapped for commercial. So the overall incentives for commercial PV systems was significantly higher than residential. The average size of a residential PV system increased 7 percent to 4,9 kilowatts (kW) while the average size of a commercial system increased by 67 percent to 114 kW.
Have a good Friday!
Hi, thanks for the nice post. Great questions! Yes, I guess incentives have had a huge role to play in the adoption of these technologies. Very few people take the time and effort to go ahead and install these things when there is not much in the way of incentives from the government. Incentives therefore should be given to sustain these efforts.
Nice post!
Joost Hoogstrate