In this week’s Solar News Roundup, Sunrun announces plans to acquire leading competitor Vivint Solar, and Oregon’s largest utility company, Portland General Electric, joins the growing number of utility companies investing in virtual power plants.
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This post is the first in our series about how to save on your energy bills even when you’re spending more time at home, as the entire EnergySage team is, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Continue to check our blog for more ideas for how you can take control of your energy bills in the coming weeks.
You may have heard that the world is basically on pause right now. The impact of the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus appears to be vast, far-reaching, and multilayered, including in some ways that you may not anticipate. For instance, with so many Americans now working from home or sheltering in place, one way you may see the impact of the pandemic personally is in how your energy bills change now that you’re spending more time at home.
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As solar batteries become more and more popular, individual utilities are beginning to offer rebate and incentive programs to make the economics of adding storage to your solar panel system more favorable. Given that solar batteries are a new product, utilities have begun experimenting with new program designs specific to solar batteries. One of the newest, increasingly common program types is a bring your own battery, or bring your own device, program.
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The electricity system is changing, from the way we generate power to the way we distribute and use it. All grid-tied energy systems are situated either “in front of the meter” or “behind the meter”, and as more and more electric customers take control of their production and usage, it is important to understand the fundamental differences between these two positions on the larger electric grid.
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Tesla’s new product isn’t an electric car or a solar tile design – instead, the company has announced a new utility-scale energy storage solution: the Tesla Megapack.
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People say all the time that they want to get off the grid. Beyond just meaning getting away from it all for a while, getting off the grid has a specific technical meaning with regards to your relationship to your utility and how you get your power. So, what exactly does it mean to go off the grid?
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In 1994, only 10% of Americans had a cell phone. And yet, in 15 short years, more Americans had cell phones than landlines. While the rapid adoption of mobile phones can’t be attributed to a single factor, there is one major parallel between the transition from landlines to smart phones and what’s actively happening today in the electricity industry: the transition from a centralized system to a distributed (or decentralized) network.
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Not all appliances are made equal. Although every appliance in your home consumes energy, utilizing each one will have a different impact on your monthly electricity bill. Understanding which of your appliances use the most energy, as well as when they’re pulling power from the grid, can help you save substantially on your monthly utility bills.
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If you’re considering installing solar panels, one of your top questions may be how long it will take after signing a contract to finish your solar project. There are a number of factors that determine this timeline – in this article, we’ll discuss those factors, as well as the average estimated timeframes for a solar panel installation from start to finish.
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There are a number of financial incentives offered to property owners going solar. From rebates to tax incentives and net metering policies, there are many policies that bring down the cost of installing solar panels on your house. One such policy is the feed-in tariff, which, when designed properly, can provide substantial financial benefits to solar customers.
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