Comparing and Mapping Rooftop Solar Incentives Across the U.S. — Presentation Detail — Celebration of Scholars

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Student presentations must have a faculty sponsor.

Abstracts must include a title and a description of the research, scholarship, or creative work. The description should be 150-225 words in length and constructed in a format or style appropriate for the presenter’s discipline.

The following points should be addressed within the selected format or style for the abstract:

A clear statement of the problem or question you pursued, or the scholarly goal or creative theme achieved in your work.
A brief comment about the significance or uniqueness of the work.
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Additional Information

More information is available at carthage.edu/celebration-scholars/. The following are members of the Research, Scholarship, and Creativity Committee who are eager to listen to ideas and answer questions:

Jun Wang
Kim Instenes
John Kirk
Nora Nickels
Andrew Pustina
James Ripley

Comparing and Mapping Rooftop Solar Incentives Across the U.S.

Name: Zoe Hobbs
Major: Economics
Hometown: Metamora, Il
Faculty Sponsor:
Other Sponsors:
Type of research: SURE
Funding: SURE

Abstract

In order to encourage the adoption of renewable technology, both governments and electric utilities offer incentives to the public on residential and commercial levels. It is important to understand which of these incentives is the most effective and efficient to reap the most benefit while eliciting the lowest cost possible for all parties. Additionally, it is important to find what other factors are affecting the rate of solar adoption by looking at trends in the United States throughout recent years. Collecting data from utilities and governments, we used the GIS software ArcGIS to map incentives over time on both a state and utility level. Then, we began running regressions to determine the effects of financial incentives on the amount of solar panel capacity installed per utility, as well as the effects of other factors such as electricity prices and green attitudes. Between the years 2011 and 2017, we found that the value of incentives for residential consumers had a significant effect of approximately 0.5W per customer per dollar increase. We also found that the value of incentives had a significant negative effect of approximately -0.26W per customer per dollar increase. These preliminary results show that there is a large difference between how residential and commercial customers react to financial incentives, and that more results could give further insight into which types of incentives work best for each type of customer.