PLUGGED INTO SOLAR: New solar energy developments are fueling local economies and providing jobs for thousands.

• Author: Cleveland, Megan
• Position: ENERGY

It's getting harder to ignore solar energy, whether it's the increasingly large installations and panels visible on rooftops or utilities' decisions to include more of it in their resource mixes. In 2016, solar represented the largest share of energy resources added to the power grid for the second consecutive year, according to GTM Research, which tracks the global electricity industry. It now represents 2 percent of the nation's total energy mix, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

State legislators are noting this growth. Depending on the scale and forms of solar development in their states, legislators have different questions to consider. Where is solar generation best located? What economic development opportunities can solar energy bring to local communities? How can solar be accessible to all demographics? is the current method of compensation for individual or rooftop solar the best approach?

How lawmakers ultimately answer these questions will have implications for state energy markets. "The policies we create in the legislature send the signals to the industry on whether to invest in our state or not," Nevada Assemblyman Chris Brooks CD) says.

Solar photovoltaic technologies--aka solar panels--comprise the majority of new installations. Any number of panels can be clustered together, allowing for a range of sizes. Utility-scale applications, for example, can generate several hundred megawatts of electricity, the equivalent of a power plant. An average residential rooftop installation is around 6 kilowatts (1,000 kW is equivalent to I MW), and many commercial installations have about 100 kW of capacity. In between are "community" or " shared" solar setups allowing a small group of customers to share the output from a medium--size installation that has several megawatts of capacity.

This scalability is what makes solar so appealing for utilities and customers.

Utility-Scale Solar

The majority of solar energy in the U.S. is commercial scale, owned by utilities or third parties, which provides electricity for thousands of customers.

Last year, a spike in solar development in North Carolina led legislators to address challenges to large-scale solar in the state. The state had the largest market for installations under the federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, or PURPA, the 1978 law requiring energy companies to buy electricity from third-party-owned renewable facilities. But to accommodate all the new capacity, the state's largest utility had to upgrade numerous substations, with customers covering the costs. In addition, the state's military...