Rooftop solar allows people to lower their energy bills while participating in the vital clean energy transition. Even better, by lowering demand from major power plants and overworked transmission infrastructure, rooftop can ensure more reliable power for everyone.
Right now, small clean energy systems like rooftop solar and residential battery storage account for only 1% of our utility’s clean energy goals. And we haven’t done nearly enough to make clean energy affordable and accessible in Virginia. At the same time, utilities are proposing to build massive, expensive, climate-warming gas plants.
Instead of pouring money into polluting fossil fuels, we should be incentivizing more rooftop and residential battery storage, and leveraging this powerful network of clean energy systems to meet peaks in demand on hot summer days. Community energy programs like these actually pay solar and battery owners for their excess electricity at the same time as they lower costs for everyone else by reducing the strain on big power plants and transmission lines. That’s a win-win-win.
We, the undersigned, call on state lawmakers to increase our investment in small clean energy systems and allow clean energy system owners to be compensated for the excess electricity they provide to the grid.
Sincerely,
