Accelerating deployment of rooftop and community solar with supportive policies would help New York meet its goal of 70% renewable power by 2030 at lower cost, says a solar trade group.
The New York Solar Energy Industries Association has called for “high-impact policy interventions” to move the state beyond its distributed solar goal of 10 GW by 2030 to reach 20 GW by 2035. The call comes in a report seeking to influence state policymakers.
Of New York’s current 5.8 GW of solar, 93% is rooftop and community solar, which NYSEIA counts as distributed solar. New York has about 3 GW of rooftop solar and nearly that amount of community solar.
Utility-scale solar is lagging in the state, and has faced “recent setbacks,” says NYSEIA. Those setbacks have created “a significant gap between New York’s pipeline of clean energy projects and what’s needed to comply” with the state’s legislated 70% renewables mandate by 2030, the report says.
Yet New York is “ahead of schedule toward the state’s goal of deploying 10 gigawatts of rooftop and community solar by 2030,” and the state’s distributed solar industry is “well-positioned to help New York close the gap” by deploying an additional 10 GW of solar “while delivering significant benefits.”
The largest projected benefit would be $50 billion in customer savings over 25 years, as 10 GW of additional distributed solar would provide about $1.65 billion in annual electricity bill savings for New Yorkers who install solar panels or subscribe to a community solar project.
Increasing the amount of distributed solar plus storage to help meet New York’s 2030 renewables goal would also result in lower costs than relying “heavily” on large-scale renewables and transmission buildout, saving a projected $28 billion, the report says, citing a 2021 analysis by Vibrant Clean Energy.
To to accelerate distributed solar deployment, NYSEIA calls for new approaches to local permitting and utility interconnection, “targeted” incentives, “smart” electric rate design, and virtual power plant programs. The group’s 11 policy recommendations could, in aggregate, “transform and accelerate New York’s clean energy progress,” the report says. Specific recommendations include:
- State-level permitting support for community solar projects that face restrictive local laws
- Automated permitting for residential solar plus storage, using software such as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s SolarAPP+
- Faster interconnection
- Flexible interconnection, to address hosting capacity constraints and mitigate costly grid upgrades
- Grid investments to support solar plus storage deployment that can supply clean power to new loads
- Improvements to New York’s Value of Distributed Energy Resources electric rate tariff
- Support for virtual power plant programs
- Continued improvements in the state’s community solar programs
- Improvements to the residential solar tax credit and the distributed solar incentive program.
NYSEIA’s report is titled “Raising New York’s Distributed Solar Goal: 20 Gigawatts by 2035.”
