Is solar energy gaining relevance over time? How is NYS helping to promote green energy?
Is solar energy gaining relevance over time? How is NYS helping to promote green energy?
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New York State solar projects with incentives have evolved over time and there are several reasons for this, the main one being the amount of support and popularity that it gained solar energy recently. Here is a plot showing the changes over time for the main counties (category other contains counties with few number of projects)
How many projects are submitted for this program over time?
How many projects are submitted for this program over time?
There are 3 main takeaways from the plots above:
The number of projects has increased everywhere in New York State with the highest being in 2015-2016
Suffolk is the County with most solar energy incentive projects
Most projects are not in the main city but in its surroundings, likely a result of architecture and space required
In order to understand better the reasoning behind this patterns, we give some context in the following paragraphs
Some important dates in terms of regulations for solar energy are:
2005, where there was an Investment Tax Credit Implementation.
2015, a year with very high number of projects across US.
According to the New York Times, in 2016 the number of residential projects across the five boroughs has risen to more than 5,300 from 186 projects in 2011, and there were another 1,900 in the pipeline.
The solar industry has surged. According to the city’s Economic Development Corporation, five solar installers were operating in the five New York City boroughs in 2005, but by 2015, the number had increased to about 55 companies, employing about 2,700 workers.
One of the main reasons for the solar boom has been prompted by a 70 percent drop in installation costs in recent years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, along with the streamlining of government approvals and incentives.
"The upfront cost for installing solar panels on a single-family house runs between $20,000 and $50,000, but federal, state and city incentives and tax credits can cut that cost in half, said David Sandbank, the director of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s NY-Sun initiative, and homeowners say that once solar panels are up and running, monthly energy bills can fall by as much as 85 percent." (New York Times)
Something important to consider when looking at the type of projects and concentrations is that most of the city’s existing solar projects are on single-family houses on Staten Island, but townhouse owners in Brooklyn are getting on board, and owners of apartment buildings in the Bronx and Queens are also starting to consider ways to harness the sun’s power. This is why we see such a high number of projects in Richmond, the county where Staten Island belongs to.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/realestate/is-new-york-ready-for-solar-power.html
Comparison of Electric utility companies incentive change in 10 years
Comparison of Electric utility companies incentive change in 10 years
Another component we were keen to understand of the evolvement over time is the incentives and its relation to the Electric Utility provider.
For this analysis we chose to focus on the years of 2008 and 2018. 2008 is the year where solar became a little more popular and the projects per year got to the thousands and 2018 we used to compare ten years later, where the number of projects was already in the ten thousands.
The question we are trying to answer here is: Has the number of projects and incentive obtained has changed in the 10 year period? Is this effect perceived the same across electric providers?
We found that the number of projects has increased a lot on this period (as we saw in the previous time series analysis), but there are different patterns in this growth by electric utility provider. Consolidated Edison has the highest percentage increase and it was leading the number of projects in 2018. PSEG Long Island on the contrary, lost its popularity and was the one with less growth over this period. (both of the mentioned providers are highlighted in the plot with the corresponding colors to ease the reading)
Average incentive decreased for all projects, no matter the provider. The one with slightly higher change is PSEG Long Island. The rest of the providers are pretty similar. One potential cause is the size of the project. As solar evolves, it goes on a smaller scale than in the beginning and therefore the incentive is lower. Another reason can be simply less budget, however this seems less likely given the efforts the State is putting on this.
How long does it take for each project from application to completion?
We are wondering how much time does a residential solar project need from applying to completed? Is there a long process for installing a solar project?
As the histogram shows, most of the projects are completed within 100 and even 200 days. Why does it take so long? A solar project installation usually takes days and a maximum of two weeks, but finding a contractor for system designing, property examination and engineering, starting applications takes several weeks or months. According to Eversource, steps before installation take up to 10 weeks, and system testing and interconnecting take 1 to 2 months. Indeed, most of the projects were completed within 300 days, and this is because New York Solar Program(NY-Sun) states that each project must be completed within 365 days to avoid cancellation of the incentives (NY-Sun).
In summary, the average time for a residential solar project takes 105 days, and some may last longer based on the property and other situations. we should be aware of the time duration to prevent from losing the incentives.
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