It’s always good news when scientific studies confirm common sense. For instance: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has just published a report confirming what earlier studies correctly ascertained years ago: Solar panels can indeed increase the value of our homes. Good night and good luck.
You’ll need it. Despite its stronger portfolio power, nationwide residential solar is underrepresented in the housing industry, while total solar systems don’t add up to anything resembling a respectable percentage of nationwide renewable energy. On the bright side, there’s nowhere to go but up.
That’s not much of a silver lining, considering the numbers. LBNL’s study Exploring California PV Home Premiums found that homes with rooftop solar arrays — the bigger and newer, the better — resold for more than non-solar homes stuck in the past. It also found that homeowners not only made back money they presciently paid for solar arrays, but often tidy profits on top of it.
Mash that encouraging data with the Solar Energy Industries Association’s research on the last few years of record-breaking American solar installations, and you’ve got some good news in the mostly bad news about our failures to properly address climate change.
Of course, none of this is really news to the LBNL or America’s accelerating solar sector, which is nevertheless playing catch-up with Germany and other motivated nations. But it once again confirms there’s little point in hitching the American economy to housing and construction if solar is left out in the cold. If we’re going to burn more oil to build more homes, we sure as hell should put solar panels on them.
Take the 70,245 non-solar homes sold from 2000-2009 analyzed in LBNL’s study: They weren’t able to match up against 1,894 solar homes sold in the same period, which pocketed an additional $5,900 in value for each kilowatt generated. That premium dropped around 9 percent annually as arrays aged, but that’s technology for you. Autocorrects arrive as innovation, efficiency and adoption reach more respectable levels. So as more and more solar homes come online — in California and other states LBNL promises to continue tracking, which includes the current residential solar explosion that was not included in this study — the sector’s renewable value will greater outshine obsolete products and paradigms that were never really worth their weight in emissions or investment. Especially since solar is getting cheaper by the week.
“This report confirms what we have said for a long time now: adding solar to your home actually increases its value,” SEIA spokesperson Ken Johnson explained in an interview. “But it’s also important to remember one other thing: As solar expands, installation costs will continue to come down. Over the past two years alone, the cost of a solar system has dropped by nearly 40 percent, making solar more affordable.”
So yes, the writing is on the walls, and the walls are atop the foundation, and the foundation is solar. If you’re thinking of building or buying a home without panels, proceed to the nearest scientist to have your wallet examined.
This article appeared at Solar Energy