Beyond the environmental benefits and lower electric bills, it turns out installing solar panels on your house actually benefits your whole community.
Beyond the environmental benefits and lower electric bills, it turns out installing solar panels on your house actually benefits your whole community.
For years some utility companies have worried that solar panels drive up electric costs for people without panels. Joshua Pearce, Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Technological University, has shown the opposite is true — grid-tied solar photovoltaic (PV) owners are actually subsidizing their non-PV neighbors.
Most PV systems are grid-tied and convert sunlight directly into electricity that is either used on-site or fed back into the grid. At night or on cloudy days, PV-owning customers use grid-sourced electricity so no batteries are needed.
Read more at: Michigan Technological University
"Customers with solar distributed generation are making it so utility companies don't have to make as many infrastructure investments, while at the same time solar shaves down peak demands when electricity is the most expensive," says Joshua Pearce, Richard Witte Endowed Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering at Michigan Technological University. (Photo Credit: Sarah Atkinson/Michigan Tech)
