Community Solar?

I've long thought that Community Solar should be a larger part of the solar movement. One advantage is that you can buy in increments so that people without a lot of money could begin the path to self-sufficiency at a younger age. Solar PV is a long term investment taking sometimes over a decade to break even on the investment (maybe longer?). Community Solar would follow someone to start the path living in apartments to a starter home to a larger home to your retirement home without regard to trees, roof orientation and local restrictions. Some of the advantages of community solar is that because more panels are installed, labor is a smaller component of the cost.


Peer-reviewed research finds that community solar makes cheap renewable power available to more people, including those who live in rentals and multifamily buildings.

The sun showers us all with energy, but not everyone can put solar panels on their roofs to harness it for themselves. Enter community solar, an increasingly popular way to expand access to solar and help fix its equity issues. For the first time, evidence shows that it’s working.

Community solar allows customers to reap electric bill savings by subscribing to a share of a local solar project, rather than installing their own array. It’s an arrangement that ideally makes the benefits of solar more accessible to people who live in rental or multifamily housing and those who just can’t afford the upfront cost of rooftop systems. Forty-two states have community solar projects in place — but the precise nature of who has benefited remained unclear. Until now.

A June study by researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory that analyzed data from 11 states found that people who adopt community solar are 6.1 times more likely to live in multifamily buildings, are 4.4 times more likely to rent, and earn 23 percent less annual income than rooftop solar adopters, who skew wealthy.

https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/energy-equity/community-solar-expands-access-to-clean-energy-new-study-shows