Incentives and Solar PV Installations in NYS

By: Maria Isabel Olivera

Introduction

For this analysis I am utilizing a dataset from Open Data NY. This dataset looked at Residential Solar Power projects throughout New York State starting from 2000. The data was compiled by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The variables of interest were:

1. TotalPV (Continuous Dependent Variable) - This variable measured the number of Protovoltaic modules installed by a homeowner.

2. Incentive (Continouse Independent Variable) - This variable measures the amount in dollars of the incentive provided to the homeowner by the NYSERDA program.

3. PurchaseT (Categorical Variable) - This variables describes the project purchase agreement type, which is either “purchased”, “leased” (Homeowner leases modules from a 3rd Party), “Power Purchase Lease (Homeowner leases module from a 3rd party for 15-20 years and then obtains ownership)

4. Utility (Categorical Variable) - This variable describes which utility company which services the area in which the homeowner resides.

NYSERDA Graph

The following graph aims to exam how the size of a NYSERDA incentive effected the number of PV modules installed and the purchase agreement type.

This graph clearly shows a positive correlation between the total amount of incentives provided by a county and the number of solar panels installed in that county. It also shows that most homeowners preferred to purchase rather than lease their solar panels.Lastly it appears that many of the homeowners in NYS who decided to install solar panels had NYS Electic and Gas as their Utility provider.

For states considering providing incentives to homeowners to encourage them to install solar panels on their roofs, perhaps with the goal of reducing energy consumption and costs, this graph demonstrates that such an investment would definitely result in the desired behavior.