IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/21342.html

The Private Net Benefits of Residential Solar PV: The Role of Electricity Tariffs, Tax Incentives and Rebates

Author

Listed:
  • Severin Borenstein

Abstract

With dramatic declines in the cost of solar PV technology over the last 5 years, the electricity industry is in the midst of discussions about whether to use this low-polluting renewable energy source in grid-scale generation or in distributed generation (DG), mostly with rooftop solar PV. California has led the growth in DG solar in the U.S. I use 2007 to early 2014 residential data from Pacific Gas & Electric – the utility with largest number of residential solar customers in the U.S. – to examine the full range of private incentives for installing residential solar, from the direct payments and tax credits to the indirect incentives that result from the residential tariff design and the crediting of solar production under “net energy metering.” I then study the income distribution of solar adopters and how that has changed over time. I find the skew to wealthy households adopting solar is still significant, but has lessened since 2011. Adoption continues to be dominated by the heaviest electricity-consuming households, probably because the steeply-tiered tariff structure greatly increases the private value of solar to such customers while reducing the incentive for consumers who are below median consumption. In fact, the financial incentive for those who adopt solar over the sample period may have been due nearly as much to California's tiered tariff structure as to the 30% federal tax credit. The California experience suggests that rate design can greatly influence the economic incentives for residential solar adoption and which customers receive those benefits.

Suggested Citation

  • Severin Borenstein, 2015. "The Private Net Benefits of Residential Solar PV: The Role of Electricity Tariffs, Tax Incentives and Rebates," NBER Working Papers 21342, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21342
    Note: EEE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w21342.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Darghouth, Naïm R. & Barbose, Galen & Wiser, Ryan, 2011. "The impact of rate design and net metering on the bill savings from distributed PV for residential customers in California," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(9), pages 5243-5253, September.
    2. Jonathan E. Hughes & Molly Podolefsky, 2015. "Getting Green with Solar Subsidies: Evidence from the California Solar Initiative," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(2), pages 235-275.
    3. Severin Borenstein, 2012. "The Redistributional Impact of Nonlinear Electricity Pricing," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 56-90, August.
    4. Alan J. Auerbach, 1982. "The New Economics of Accelerated Depreciation," NBER Working Papers 0848, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Koichiro Ito, 2014. "Do Consumers Respond to Marginal or Average Price? Evidence from Nonlinear Electricity Pricing," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(2), pages 537-563, February.
    6. Severin Borenstein, 2012. "The Private and Public Economics of Renewable Electricity Generation," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 26(1), pages 67-92, Winter.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mar Reguant, 2018. "The Efficiency and Sectoral Distributional Implications of Large-Scale Renewable Policies," NBER Working Papers 24398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Stefano Carattini & Wade Davis & Béla Figge & Anton Heimerdinger, 2025. "Solar Adoption by Mandates," CESifo Working Paper Series 12359, CESifo.
    3. Liu, Chang & Lin, Boqiang, 2020. "Is increasing-block electricity pricing effectively carried out in China? A case study in Shanghai and Shenzhen," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 138(C).
    4. Christian Gambardella & Michael Pahle & Wolf-Peter Schill, 2016. "Do Benefits from Dynamic Tariffing Rise? Welfare Effects of Real-Time Pricing under Carbon-Tax-Induced Variable Renewable Energy Supply," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1621, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    5. La Monaca, Sarah & Ryan, Lisa, 2017. "Solar PV where the sun doesn’t shine: Estimating the economic impacts of support schemes for residential PV with detailed net demand profiling," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 731-741.
    6. Ming-Feng Hung & Bin-Tzong Chie & Huei-Chu Liao, 2020. "A Comparison of Electricity-Pricing Programs: Economic Efficiency, Cost Recovery, and Income Distribution," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 56(1), pages 143-163, February.
    7. Axel Gautier & Julien Jacqmin, 2020. "PV adoption: the role of distribution tariffs under net metering," Journal of Regulatory Economics, Springer, vol. 57(1), pages 53-73, February.
    8. Lucas W Davis, 2017. "Evidence of a decline in electricity use by U.S. households," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(2), pages 1098-1105.
    9. L. (Lisa B.) Ryan & Sarah La Monaca & Linda Mastrandrea & Petr Spodniak, 2018. "Harnessing Electricity Retail Tariffs to Support Climate Change Policy," Working Papers 201822, School of Economics, University College Dublin.
    10. Abajian, Alexander & Pretnar, Nick, 2023. "Subsidies for Close Substitutes: Evidence from Residential Solar Systems," MPRA Paper 118171, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Harry Humes & Niall Farrell, 2025. "The equity and efficiency effects of energy subsidy cost-recovery," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 23(4), pages 1309-1335, December.
    12. Albijadi, Abdullah, 2026. "Energy storage adoption: Evidence from self-generation incentive program in California," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    13. Joshua A. Blonz, 2023. "The Costs of Misaligned Incentives: Energy Inefficiency and the Principal-Agent Problem," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 286-321, August.
    14. Lin, Boqiang & Zhu, Penghu, 2021. "Has increasing block pricing policy been perceived in China? Evidence from residential electricity use," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    15. Arik Levinson & Emilson Silva, 2022. "The Electric Gini: Income Redistribution through Energy Prices," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 341-365, May.
    16. Peter Levell & Martin O'Connell & Kate Smith, 2025. "The welfare effects of price shocks and household relief packages: evidence from an energy crisis," IFS Working Papers W25/03, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    17. Fouquet, Roger & O'Garra, Tanya, 2022. "In pursuit of progressive and effective climate policies: Comparing an air travel carbon tax and a frequent flyer levy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    18. Lucas W. Davis, 2024. "The Economic Determinants of Heat Pump Adoption," Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 5(1), pages 162-199.
    19. S. Borenstein, 2013. "Effective and Equitable Adoption of Opt-In Residential Dynamic Electricity Pricing," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 42(2), pages 127-160, March.
    20. Dong, Zeyang & Liang, Jing & Linn, Joshua & Qiu, Yueming, 2025. "How Do Residential Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Technologies Affect Electricity Prices and Consumer Welfare?," RFF Working Paper Series 25-28, Resources for the Future.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L94 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Transportation and Utilities - - - Electric Utilities
    • Q42 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Alternative Energy Sources
    • Q52 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Pollution Control Adoption and Costs; Distributional Effects; Employment Effects
    • Q58 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Environmental Economics: Government Policy

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:21342. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.