by Cecilia Aguillon
The Renewable Energy Era will rank alongside the Information Age and the Industrial Revolution as one of the great milestones in human history. Like those before, this latest revolution will proceed one battle at a time.
Some may wonder, for instance, whether conflict is inevitable between U.S. utilities and rooftop solar advocates. Both face huge challenges they perceive as coming from the other. One example is the rising debate over the policy of “net metering,” especially where solar is widespread, but even in states with less than one percent solar penetration. Utilities argue that rising solar adoption will cause technical problems to the grid and unfairly shift infrastructure costs to non-solar ratepayers. Solar stakeholders counter that the true societal benefits of solar energy far outweigh the costs for the entire ratepayer group by contributing to cleaner air, better public health, greater local employment, higher tax revenues, and other benefits traditionally excluded from the analysis.
While the U.S. seems mired in debate over distributed generation, mature solar markets like Germany and Japan are solving grid-integration issues and overcoming limitations associated with renewable energy. These countries are investing to commercialize energy storage solutions. Global companies like Kyocera, BMW, Bosch and Panasonic are also focusing R&D on energy storage technologies, and the list of new companies entering the storage space keeps growing. It’s only a matter of time before a cost-effective solar energy storage technology is deployed ubiquitously in our homes and neighborhoods.
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