Rooftop solar is heavily subsidized almost everywhere it’s popular. Rooftop solar isn’t a good deal for utilities or their non-rooftop-solar customers.
I say this as someone who lived off the grid on solar for years; encouraging rooftop solar may have kickstarted the learning curve for the solar panel industry, and as such may have been pretty good social policy.
But it definitely owes its existence to subsidies.
These days grid scale solar makes lots of sense, rooftop solar still doesn’t (and the subsidies are now harder to defend).
Rooftop solar is heavily subsidized almost everywhere it’s popular. Rooftop solar isn’t a good deal for utilities or their non-rooftop-solar customers.
I say this as someone who lived off the grid on solar for years; encouraging rooftop solar may have kickstarted the learning curve for the solar panel industry, and as such may have been pretty good social policy.
But it definitely owes its existence to subsidies.
These days grid scale solar makes lots of sense, rooftop solar still doesn’t (and the subsidies are now harder to defend).