Costs and Benefits of Community vs. Individual End-Use for Solar Water Heating
The modeling work from this project will determine the efficacy of community solar water heating vs. individual solar water heating in different situations.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
9th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$250,000
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
In June 2019, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory completed their final report and had their final project meeting. In the proposal for this project LBNL hypothesized that there may exist an optimal scale at which the system delivers maximum benefit to the users. The results show that this is indeed the case, with a scale of 8 households providing maximum benefits (minimum life cycle cost) for single-family detached household, and 32 households for single-family attached and multi-family.
The Issue
Solar Water Heating (SWH) still requires significant institutional support within California to reach a point where growing market share produces the cost reductions that lead to self-sustaining expansion of the market. It is clear that improving consumer information and raising incentive levels should help increase SWH system market share. The remaining questions for SWH are: 1) What is the optimal level of investment of public resources, and 2) How can investment be more targeted to maximize the chances of successful uptake of SWH projects? The objective of this project is to provide data that will be useful in guiding decisions about SWH program design and deployment.
Project Innovation
This project evaluates different solar water heating (SWH) technologies, installation types, and financing mechanisms. The team is developing a model to address cost, payback, and how investments can maximize uptake of SWH. This project assesses factors affecting the scale of solar water heating (SWH) installations, such as system cost, performance, and reliability and scale. These factors impact whether a project is undertaken at the individual or community level. The team is also quantifying state-level energy and natural gas emissions reductions from SWH installations.
Project Benefits
The resulting study creates a detailed cost/benefit modeling framework, that does not currently exist, to evaluate utilization of SWH systems at different scales and whether there is an optimal scale, e.g. individual-level versus community-level. This modeling framework and supporting data advances California's statutory energy goals by helping improve uptake and scale of SWH projects in California. It also informs market transformation programs such as the California Solar Initiative - Thermal.
Environmental Sustainability
If 1% of the market adopted SWH, it could avoid natural gas consumption by 1.6 million therms annually. The associated annual emissions reductions are approximately 8500 metric tons of CO2, 2.4 short tons of NOx, 2.9 short tons of CO, 0.4 short tons of volatile organic compounds and 0.2 short tons of methane.
Key Project Members
