Solar Value

Solar electricity provides many valuable benefits to cooperatives, cooperative members and society. Some benefits, like freedom from pollution, are well-known. Other valuable benefits are not as obvious, however, cooperatives have much to gain by capturing the full benefits of solar power.

Utility planners and analysts across the country evaluate these benefits and consistently find that solar delivers net benefits to society and the grid.

Solar Power Can Avoid Costs

• Solar power reduces the need for expensive power generation and fuels during times of high demand. Storage innovations, including water heating, help cooperatives capture this benefit.
• Solar reduces energy losses from electric transmission through local generation that is sited closer to consumption. This is especially important for cooperatives with a low density of consumers across wide geographic areas.
• Solar avoids costs of new infrastructure such as power plants, transmission lines and substations. When a co-op member makes a solar investment on-site, they help the cooperative avoid these larger and riskier investments.
• Cooperatives have modernized grid operations with AMI (Advanced Meter Infrastructure) and other technologies which aid in the greater and more creative adoption of solar power. Many cooperatives are poised to succeed with solar.
• Solar is fuel-free, so it is protected from the price swings of fossil fuels and brings more certainty to energy costs.

Expanded Jobs and Economic Development

• Between 2012 and 2017, solar employment grew by 110% overall or 16% annually, adding 131,000 jobs. In 2017, the total number of solar workers in the United States was 250,271. Solar now employs twice as many Americans as the entire coal industry.
• Solar creates and saves local jobs – many are in installation and maintenance which cannot be outsourced.
• Solar energy is produced locally while fossil fuels are often imported – sending money out of local economies. Investment in local power generation with cooperatives helps rural economies by keeping energy dollars in the community.
• Solar encourages local producer competition. Modern markets place a high value on products produced with sustainable practices such as solar power.

Reduced Pollution Improves Public Health

• Solar reduces dangerous air pollutants linked to asthma, premature death and other dangerous health issues.
• With the costs of climate change rising, solar energy produces electricity without global warming pollution. Adopting solar energy prepares cooperatives for inevitable requirements to decarbonize electric power supplies.
• Solar avoids pollution control costs and liabilities such as installing new pollution reduction technologies.

Reduced Risks

• Fossil fuels carry risks of price and supply volatility. A fuel-free system like solar provides immunity and a hedge against such higher costs.
• Solar energy places pressure on the price of other fuels by reducing demand.
• Solar increases energy security by reducing reliance on vulnerable centralized generation and transmission infrastructure.

For more information on the Value of Solar

• Environment America evaluated numerous studies in this report and found that individuals and businesses that decide to “go solar” deliver significant benefits to the grid and society.
• The Solar Energy Industries Association has links to cost-benefit studies from around the country, here.