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Here’s how much money you’ll get with the Inflation Reduction Act

Inflation Reduction Act

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a “free electric bank account with your name on it.” It’s packed with rebates and tax credits that will help Americans purchase everything from EVs to solar and electrical appliances to heat pumps. Check out this easy-to-use IRA savings calculator from Rewiring America that tells you what you get – and when.

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Here’s how rooftop solar could have prevented 2021’s Texas big freeze power outage

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A year on from the big Texas freeze that knocked out the state’s power system and caused at least 246 deaths, new research released yesterday found that rooftop solar could have supplied more than enough electricity to meet the shortfall on all but two of the 13 days when power production fell short of forecasted demand.

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Rooftop solar could provide 25% of US electricity needs (up from <1%), study says – here are charts illustrating state-by-state potential

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We are really only starting to develop the energy potential of the giant nuclear reactor in space that we call the sun. We know that every day it sends enough energy to earth to power human civilization 10 times over, but we haven’t managed to scale ways to harvest it the way nature has done almost perfectly.

For generating electricity, photovoltaic cells on solar panels have been the method of choice, but even then there are different approaches, like large solar farms owned by electric utilities and investors or distributed solar installations on rooftops owned by homeowners and businesses. The latter has been an attractive solution to many: it decentralizes energy production and enables homeowners to get the direct benefits of solar energy.

But the question of scaling remains: how many houses and buildings can realistically benefit from solar? A study by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) tried to answer just that, and came to the conclusion that about 25% of the electricity needs in the US could come directly from rooftop solar installations.
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Solar rooftops can strengthen an aging power grid and save Californians $1.4 billion every year, says SolarCity

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SolarCity, the largest residential solar installer in the US, employs a grid engineering team to integrate its systems and evaluate the impact on the grid. The company decided this week to publish the team’s findings in a white paper titled: “A Pathway to the Distributed Grid”.
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