The geography of solar energy in the United States: Market definition, industry structure, and choice in solar PV adoption

O’Shaughnessy, Eric; Nemet, Gregory F.; Darghouth, Naïm

doi:10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.004

Title: The geography of solar energy in the United States: Market definition, industry structure, and choice in solar PV adoption

Full Record
Other Related Research

Abstract

© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The solar photovoltaic (PV) installation industry comprises thousands of firms around the world who collectively installed nearly 200 million panels in 2015. Spatial analysis of the emerging industry has received considerable attention from the literature, especially on the demand side concerning peer effects and adopter clustering. However this research area does not include similarly sophisticated spatial analysis on the supply side of the installation industry. The lack of understanding of the spatial structure of the PV installation industry leaves PV market research to rely on jurisdictional lines, such as counties, to define geographic PV markets. We develop an approach that uses the spatial distribution of installers’ activity to define geographic boundaries for PV markets. Our method is useful for PV market research and applicable in the contexts of other industries. We use our approach to demonstrate that the PV industry in the United States is spatially heterogeneous. Despite the emergence of some national-scale PV installers, installers are largely local and installer communities are unique from one region to the next. The social implications of the spatial heterogeneity of the emerging PV industry involve improving understanding of issues such as market power, industry consolidation, and how muchmore » choice potential adopters have.« less

Authors:

O’Shaughnessy, Eric ^[1]; Nemet, Gregory F. ^[2]; Darghouth, Naïm ^[3]

National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Publication Date:: 2018-01-30

Research Org.:: National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States); Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:: USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office

OSTI Identifier:: 1421781

Alternate Identifier(s):: OSTI ID: 1713215

Report Number(s):: NREL/JA-6A20-70784
Journal ID: ISSN 2214-6296

Grant/Contract Number:: AC36-08GO28308; AC02-05CH11231

Resource Type:: Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:: Energy Research and Social Science

Additional Journal Information:: Journal Volume: 38; Journal Issue: C; Journal ID: ISSN 2214-6296

Publisher:: Elsevier

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

Subject:: 14 SOLAR ENERGY; 29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY; solar; market definition; spatial analysis; industry

Citation Formats


                    O’Shaughnessy, Eric, Nemet, Gregory F., and Darghouth, Naïm. The geography of solar energy in the United States: Market definition, industry structure, and choice in solar PV adoption.  United States: N. p., 2018. 
Web.  doi:10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.004.

Copy to clipboard


                    O’Shaughnessy, Eric, Nemet, Gregory F., & Darghouth, Naïm. The geography of solar energy in the United States: Market definition, industry structure, and choice in solar PV adoption.  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.004

Copy to clipboard


                    O’Shaughnessy, Eric, Nemet, Gregory F., and Darghouth, Naïm. Tue .  
"The geography of solar energy in the United States: Market definition, industry structure, and choice in solar PV adoption".  United States.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.004.  https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1421781.

Copy to clipboard


                    
@article{osti_1421781,

  title        = {The geography of solar energy in the United States: Market definition, industry structure, and choice in solar PV adoption},

  author       = {O’Shaughnessy, Eric and Nemet, Gregory F. and Darghouth, Naïm},

  abstractNote = {© 2018 Elsevier Ltd The solar photovoltaic (PV) installation industry comprises thousands of firms around the world who collectively installed nearly 200 million panels in 2015. Spatial analysis of the emerging industry has received considerable attention from the literature, especially on the demand side concerning peer effects and adopter clustering. However this research area does not include similarly sophisticated spatial analysis on the supply side of the installation industry. The lack of understanding of the spatial structure of the PV installation industry leaves PV market research to rely on jurisdictional lines, such as counties, to define geographic PV markets. We develop an approach that uses the spatial distribution of installers’ activity to define geographic boundaries for PV markets. Our method is useful for PV market research and applicable in the contexts of other industries. We use our approach to demonstrate that the PV industry in the United States is spatially heterogeneous. Despite the emergence of some national-scale PV installers, installers are largely local and installer communities are unique from one region to the next. The social implications of the spatial heterogeneity of the emerging PV industry involve improving understanding of issues such as market power, industry consolidation, and how much choice potential adopters have.},

  doi          = {10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.004},

  journal      = {Energy Research and Social Science},

  number       = C,

  volume       = 38,

  place        = {United States},

  year         = {2018},

  month        = {1}

}

Copy to clipboard

Journal Article:

Free Publicly Available Full Text

Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Publisher's Version of Record

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2018.01.004

Other availability

Search WorldCat to find libraries that may hold this journal

Save / Share:

Export Metadata

Save to My Library

Similar Records in DOE PAGES and OSTI.GOV collections:

Understanding Adoption of a Key Soft Cost Reduction Strategy: Modeling Administrative Choices Regarding Streamlined Solar Permitting (Final Technical Report)

Technical Report Meier, Alan K. ; Taylor, Margaret

In the U.S., the process by which residential rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) system installations are permitted and inspected by an “authority having jurisdiction” (AHJ) and interconnected to the grid varies across the country. As the U.S. has roughly 23,000 AHJs and 3,000 utilities with varying degrees of local autonomy, permitting, inspection, and interconnection (PI&I) heterogeneity represents a significant “soft cost” barrier to the growth of the residential solar PV market. Burkhardt et al. (2015), for example, finds that variations in local permitting procedures alone can lead to differences in average residential PV prices of approximatelymore »« less
https://doi.org/10.2172/1617035

Full Text Available
A Non-Modeling Exploration of Residential Solar Photovoltaic (PV) Adoption and Non-Adoption

Technical Report Moezzi, Mithra ; Ingle, Aaron ; Lutzenhiser, Loren ; ...

Although U.S. deployment of residential rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has accelerated in recent years, PV is still installed on less than 1 percent of single-family homes. Most research on household PV adoption focuses on scaling initial markets and modeling predicted growth rather than considering more broadly why adoption occurs. Among the studies that have investigated the characteristics of PV adoption, most collected data from adopters, sometimes with additional non-adopter data, and rarely from people who considered but did not adopt PV. Yet the vast majority of Americans are non-adopters, and they are a diverse group - understanding their waysmore »« less
https://doi.org/10.2172/1379469

Full Text Available
Final Report: Towards an Emergent Model of Technology Adoption for Accelerating the Diffusion of Residential Solar PV

Technical Report Rai, Varun

This project sought to enable electric utilities in Texas to accelerate diffusion of residential solar photovoltaic (PV) by systematically identifying and targeting existing barriers to PV adoption. A core goal of the project was to develop an integrated research framework that combines survey research, econometric modeling, financial modeling, and implementation and evaluation of pilot projects to study the PV diffusion system. This project considered PV diffusion as an emergent system, with attention to the interactions between the constituent parts of the PV socio-technical system including: economics of individual decision-making; peer and social influences; behavioral responses; and information and transaction costs.more »« less
https://doi.org/10.2172/1332932

Full Text Available
Understanding the Evolution of Customer Motivations and Adoption Barriers in Residential Solar Markets: Survey Data

Dataset Sigrin, Ben ; Dietz, Tom ; Henry, Adam ; ...

This research focused on accelerating solar photovoltaic (PV) diffusion by collecting new market data and developing predictive modeling frameworks to test and refine understandings of household level motivations for adopting solar. Three different household-level surveys were fielded: one for households who had installed PV on their current home or had signed a contract to do so (the Adopter survey), one for households that had seriously considered PV but had not installed it (the Considerer survey), and one for the general population who did not have PV on their current home (the general population survey or GPS). Survey respondents were frommore »« less
https://doi.org/10.7799/1362095

View Dataset
Is the Adoption of Electric Vehicles (EVs) and Solar Photovoltaics (PVs) Interdependent or Independent? An Integrated EVs-PVs Modeling Framework

Conference Sharda, Shivam ; Garikapati, Venu M. ; Goulias, Konstadinos ; ...

Transportation and residential energy consumption account for more than one-half of the overall energy consumption in the United States. Adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) can play a key role in decarbonizing the transportation sector, while the adoption of renewable energy sources (e.g., solar photovoltaics or PVs) could bring similar benefits to the residential energy sector and in turn support transport electrification. Although the market share for both EVs and PVs continue to grow, both these emerging technologies are deployed rather disjoint without considering the existence of potential similarities among users who own (or aspire to own) EVs and PVs. Thismore »« less
Full Text Available

Similar Records