Growth in renewable energy in the U.S. over the past decade has been propelled by a number of forces, including rising fossil fuel prices, environmental concerns, and policy support at the state and federal levels. In this article, we review and discuss what are arguably the two most important...

As a market segment for solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption, new homes have a number of attractive attributes. Homebuyers can easily roll the cost of the PV system into their tax-deductible home mortgage and, with rebates and other financial incentives, potentially achieve an immediate net-positive...

Renewables portfolio standards (RPS) have proliferated at the state level in the United States since the late 1990s. In combination with Federal tax incentives, state RPS requirements have emerged as one of the most important drivers of renewable energy capacity additions. The focus of most RPS...

The long economic lifetime and development lead-time of many electric infrastructure investments requires that utility resource planning consider potential costs and risks over a lengthy time horizon. One long-term -- and potentially far-reaching -- risk currently facing the electricity industry...

Installations of PV systems have been expanding at a rapid pace in recent years. In the United States, the market for PV is driven by national, state, and local government incentives, including upfront cash rebates, production-based incentives, requirements that electricity suppliers purchase a...

Installations of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems have been growing at a rapid pace in recent years. In 2009, approximately 7,500 megawatts (MW) of PV were installed globally, up from approximately 6,000 MW in 2008, consisting primarily of grid-connected applications. With 335 MW of...

The solar power market is growing at a quickening pace, fueled by an array of national and local initiatives and policies aimed at improving the value proposition of customer-sited photovoltaic (PV) systems. Though these policies take many forms, they commonly include up-front capital cost...

Concerns about the price and supply of natural gas have deepened in recent years both nationally and in New England. Renewable energy (RE) technologies can directly hedge natural gas price risk by reducing the need to purchase variable-price natural gas-fired electricity generation, and...

The market for small wind systems in the United States, often defined as systems less than or equal to 100 kW that produce power on the customer side of the meter, is small but growing steadily. The installed capacity of domestic small wind systems in 2002 was reportedly 15-18 MW, though the...