What percent of solar installations are grid tied?

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Plowman
Plowman Solar Expert Posts: 203 ✭✭✭✭✭
in General Solar Power Topics #1
My Google-fu is failing me. I'm trying to find what percentage of solar capacity in the US is grid tied (as opposed to completely off-grid). Anybody know?

The article below got me thinking about this question. My guess is the great majority of solar capacity in the US is grid-tied, but I can't find a figure to back this up. If so, the argument below is vastly overblown.
Too many off-grid personal power stations will undermine communal infrastructure

The price of photovoltaic cells continues to plummet while their efficiency continues to rise. Batteries and other energy-storage technologies are also getting better, prompting more people to unplug from the grid. If current trends continue, the result could be catastrophic, not just for the utilities but for anyone who wants access to affordable, stable electricity.

Here’s why. “When you have mass defection from the grid, that means many people are overinvesting in individual, unnetworked assets to meet their own peak energy demands,” says James Mandel, a manager at the Rocky Mountain Institute, in Boulder, Colo. “As a result, it leaves those least able to afford a personal power station—low-income customers, those who rent or have bad credit—to pick up the cost of the grid.” And those homeowners and businesses going it alone might find operating and maintaining their own “utility in a box” expensive and time-consuming, he adds. Needless to say, as their revenues erode, grid operators will hardly be viable. “That’s a future we’d rather not see,” Mandel says.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/the-smarter-grid/the-rise-of-the-personal-power-plant#WhatCouldGoWrong
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  • solarix
    solarix Solar Expert Posts: 713 ✭✭
    #2
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    Re: What percent of solar installations are grid tied?

    About 250,000 off-grid systems according to Home-Power magazine and the 2013 SEIA report says 445,000 on-grid systems utility/commercial/residential.
    That is maybe 1 GWatt off-grid, and about 12 GWatts on-grid. Grid operators don't need to worry about people defecting off-grid. Its the on-grid solar people that just pay the minimum service fee that is going to change their business model.
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  • zoneblue
    zoneblue Solar Expert Posts: 1,220 ✭✭✭✭
    #3
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    Re: What percent of solar installations are grid tied?

    Thats a pathetic whine from a utility perspective. The fact is solar is now very near competitive, and within a few years will be cheaper. What are they doing about it? Nothing. Too much money invested in old tech, nuclear, dead dinosaurs, and big distribution.

    If they want people like me to stop defecting, they need to provide a better service. Grid feed in here is not great, paying about 25% of retail. Daily line charges remain stubornly high, discouraging conservation. Connect charges where we have to pay for _their_ power poles and transformers.

    On the upside you can now lease a hybrid battery system. I think we will see radical changes in the electricty sector in the years to come.

    But with what we now know about nuclear, every sane person should vociferously boycott nuclear, that is suicide tech plain and simple. Not one single country has a waste disposal system in place. Sweden and Finland have plans and are working on systems, but even so noone knows what will happen over the 100,000 year life of the waste. That is 4000 generations that have to pay for 3 generations idiocy.





    solarix wrote: »
    About 250,000 off-grid systems according to Home-Power magazine and the 2013 SEIA report says 445,000 on-grid systems utility/commercial/residential.
    That is maybe 1 GWatt off-grid, and about 12 GWatts on-grid. Grid operators don't need to worry about people defecting off-grid. Its the on-grid solar people that just pay the minimum service fee that is going to change their business model.
    1.8kWp CSUN, 10kWh AGM, Midnite Classic 150, Outback VFX3024E,
    http://zoneblue.org/cms/page.php?view=off-grid-solar


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  • Plowman
    Plowman Solar Expert Posts: 203 ✭✭✭✭✭
    #4
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    Re: What percent of solar installations are grid tied?
    solarix wrote: »
    About 250,000 off-grid systems according to Home-Power magazine and the 2013 SEIA report says 445,000 on-grid systems utility/commercial/residential.
    That is maybe 1 GWatt off-grid, and about 12 GWatts on-grid. Grid operators don't need to worry about people defecting off-grid. Its the on-grid solar people that just pay the minimum service fee that is going to change their business model.

    Thanks, those data are the best I've got so far. What year is the 250,000 figure for? And what are you basing your installed capacity figures on?

    Based on the above, ~64% of installations are grid-tied, representing ~92% of installed capacity. That's about what I expected, but hard to find figures.
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  • niel
    niel Solar Expert Posts: 10,300 ✭✭✭✭
    #5
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    Re: What percent of solar installations are grid tied?

    in reality the off grid figure is likely a low guess for the ones on the grid are easier to count. i don't believe it will be too much higher though for off grid as the gt is the most popular, but there are apt to be many off the grid that are simply missed in the count.

    in fact nobody really knows for sure for either method what the numbers actually are as we also have those on the grid that are guerrilla.
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  • jebatty
    jebatty Solar Expert Posts: 56 ✭
    #6
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    Re: What percent of solar installations are grid tied?

    The argument (“As a result, it leaves those least able to afford a personal power station—low-income customers, those who rent or have bad credit—to pick up the cost of the grid.”) is meaningless. Low-income people cannot afford all sorts of things: healthcare, daycare, rent, mortgage payments, and healthy food for a start on the list.

    The issue is low wages, lack of education, lack of an economy that can support living wages for all, lack of affordable basic healthcare for all, and an economic system that preys on the disadvantaged.

    If Big Power cared about low-income people, it would eliminate base charges because those hurt low-income people the most as a percentage of income; have true conservation rating with low kwh charges for low usage, rising increasingly as usage goes up; not give discounts for high usage, for business, industry etc.
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