From the U.S. Government Accountability Office, www.gao.gov

Transcript for: Residential Solar Electricity and Other Energy Saving
Technologies

Description: Audio interview by GAO staff with Frank Rusco, Director,
Natural Resources and Environment

Related GAO Work: GAO-17-142: Electricity: Status of Residential 
Deployment of Solar and Other Technologies and Potential Benefits and 
Challenges


Released: March 2017


[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] Welcome to GAO's Watchdog Report, your source for news and
information from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. It's March
2017. Traditionally, electricity has moved in one direction, from
electricity suppliers to customers. Today, rooftop solar panels, battery
systems, smart thermostats, and other technologies increasingly allow
customers to generate, store, and efficiently manage their electricity
use. A team led by Frank Rusco, a director in GAO's Natural Resources
and Environment team, recently looked at potential benefits and
challenges of these technologies. Sarah Kaczmarek sat down with Frank to
talk about what they found.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What's the government doing to incentivize people
to install solar panelsEUR

[ Frank Rusco: ] Quite a lot, actually. First, there are federal tax
credits which can pay up to the 30 percent of the cost of installation.
Secondly, 41 states require utilities in those states to buy excess
power generated by those systems. And lastly, some states even provide
additional tax incentives.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] So solar panels certainly seem more common. Is that
the trendEUR

[ Frank Rusco: ] It is a trend. Still, there are very few households
that have solar panels. For example, there's less than 1 percent
nationally. However, since 2010, the number of solar panels on
residential properties has increased by more than a factor of seven.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] So tell me about some of the benefits for people
who are using technologies like solar panels or other things like smart
thermostats.

[ Frank Rusco: ] Well, the main benefit is the cost of power. With all
the incentives, and if you can afford the initial installation cost, and
you live in a place with a lot of sun, you can actually reduce your
utility bill. Going forward with smart thermostats and advanced meters
that can communicate with thermostats and smart homes where all of the
appliances are attached to the thermostat and can be operated remotely
from a smart phone, for example, there are a lot of opportunities to
sort of change how people use power and how much they use.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] Sounds like some good benefits now and some
interesting ones in the future, as well. Could you tell me, though, can
there be too much of a good thing here, or are there some challenges
with solar panel technologyEUR

[ Frank Rusco: ] Potentially, yes. There are challenges with
incorporating more and more solar power onto a grid that is used by
many, many thousands of users and supplied by many, many producers of
electricity. Now to understand this, I'll make an analogy to water. When
you turn the tap on the water, water comes through the pipes and that's
connected to either a tank full of water or a reservoir, and so as long
as there's water in a tank and water in the reservoir, people can turn
on their taps, and it doesn't affect anybody else's use. Electricity is
a little more complicated. There is effectively no central storage of
electricity, so electricity has to be generated exactly when it's
consumed, because basically, electricity moves at about the speed of
light. So if a bunch of people turn on their air conditioners, there's a
system operator who sees oh, there's this power drain, and they have to
be able to turn up power generation--some maybe a gas plant or hydro.
They have to start generating more electricity instantaneously to
balance the system. If the system gets too far out of balance, then
you'll get a black out or a loss of power. So if you have a lot of solar
panels, as they do in Hawaii. Fourteen percent of the houses in Hawaii
have solar panels on them, and if all a sudden, say, you have a
intermittent cloudy and sunny day, the clouds come over, all of a
sudden, the system has a lot less power on it, and the system operator
then has to turn on other generators to balance the system. And
conversely, when the clouds go away, and all of a sudden the solar
panels are generating a whole lot of electricity, well then, the system
operator has to turn down other generating sources. And so it's a little
more complicated than it used to be.

[ Sarah Kaczmarek: ] What do you see as the bottom line of your report
for customers who use these technologies or might be thinking about
doing so in the futureEUR

[ Frank Rusco: ] Well, if you're thinking about doing it in the future,
you want to look at what tax incentives are in place at the time that
you're going to do it. These things may be changing over time, either
from federal policy or state policy. So you need to figure that out. See
if it makes sense. Going forward, if you have more of these smart
technologies installed in your house or you have a fully smart house,
you might actually be able to benefit in many other ways. And, for
example, have an electric vehicle being charged by your solar panels
when they're producing more electricity than your house is using, and
then use the battery of your car to put power back into your house at
night. So there's a lot of options.

[ Background Music ]

[ Narrator: ] To learn more, visit GAO.gov and be sure to tune in to the
next episode of GAO's Watchdog Report for more from the congressional
watchdog, the U.S. Government Accountability Office.