Rooftop solar will soon be more affordable for some people in Nashville.
The Nashville Electric Service is creating a new program to pay households with solar panels that produce excess electricity. The program was designed through a new contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority.
Between 1,000 and 1,200 homes will be able to participate in the program, based on the cap of 10 megawatts in the contract. Households that already have solar systems will be automatically switched into the program.
NES estimated that about 700 homes have solar in their service territory, leaving room for 300 to 500 more households.
“The teams at NES and TVA will work the remainder of 2023 on details and plan to open the program mid-winter timeframe,” NES said in a statement.
Nashville ranks among worst for solar capacity
Nationally, solar panels cover the rooftops of 3% of all households. In Nashville, or in the NES service territory, just 0.16% of households have solar. The new program would increase that share, under the higher estimate, to 0.28%.
Nashville ranked 64th of 67 major cities for solar capacity per capita in a 2022 Environment America report, which says fossil fuel interests and some utilities see residential solar as a threat.
“These interests have united in an effort to slow the progress of solar energy,” the report authors wrote. “Additionally, some states and utilities continue to target solar customers with special fees, charges and rate designs in order to reduce the appeal and financial promise of installing solar panels.”
In Nashville, for example, NES set up a monthly fee for households with solar.
The Tennessee Valley Authority also plays a large role in this ranking. The utility has the least amount of solar installed per capita of any major utility in the Southeast.
“We buy all of our power from the Tennessee Valley Authority,” NES CEO Teresa Broyles-Aplin said at an environmental conference at Vanderbilt University earlier this year. “We’re really entrenched with them.”
Courtesy Southern Alliance for Clean Energy The Tennessee Valley Authority has the least amount of solar per person among big utilities in the Southeast.
Broyles-Aplin declined to interview with WPLN News about the new rooftop solar program.
(Side note: Fossil fuel interests may have blocked rooftop solar as far back as 1905, as explained in a recent story in The Conversation. “Solar was a threat as it is an inherently democratic technology — everyone has access to the sun — which can empower citizens and communities, unlike fossil fuels which necessitate empire-building,” writes Sugandha Srivastav.)
NES updates “flexibility” contract with TVA
For about four years now, NES has been in a 20-year, rolling contract with TVA. This contract allows NES and other local power companies to get 5% of their power from other sources. This allowance is called “flexibility.”
The new contract, which the NES board approved last month, was designed to make it easier for NES to get that 5% flexibility, which has been calculated at 180 megawatts.
NES says 120 MW will help the Metro Nashville government meet its sustainability goals, through certificates, and 60 MW will be for customers — including 10 MW for the Nashville Predators and 10 MW for the rooftop program.
Courtesy U.S. Department of Energy/Flickr The Tennessee Valley Authority and the Nashville Electric Service have set up a cap of 10 megawatts of rooftop solar through a new contract.
With all of the new solar, carbon emissions will be reduced by 100,000 metric tons annually, the equivalent of taking 22,000 gasoline-powered cars off the road, according to NES.
As part of the new contract, NES will enter into a purchase power agreement with Silicon Ranch, a Nashville-based solar developer. This agreement for 135 MW of solar may save NES about $5 million to $15 million annually, depending on certain TVA fuel rates, or about $650 million over 30 years, according to NES.
NES and TVA declined to provide the full contract to WPLN News.
“We are still in development of many of the final details and would prefer to provide information when it is closer to final, which should help to avoid any missteps to this very positive trajectory of this effort,” NES said in a statement.
What does rooftop solar cost?
Solar panels on homes cost an average of $16,000, and it usually takes homeowners about six to 10 years to break even, according to Forbes, though this varies from state to state. A solar system with battery storage has an average cost of about $25,000 to $35,000 for one home, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
In 2021, the median income for a household with rooftop solar in the U.S. was $110,000, nearly double the national median income for all households. That number might be skewed a little high, however, since half of solar adopters were in California, which has relatively higher incomes, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.
Rooftop solar can increase the value of homes. People pay about 4% more on homes with solar, according to Zillow research in 2019.
Rooftop solar has a lot of benefits for communities. In addition to the obvious — cutting climate and air pollution — residential solar can strengthen the grid when paired with storage. Last year, Chicago implemented the nation’s first public microgrid, a system of solar and storage that can power more than 1,000 residences, businesses and public buildings, including Chicago police and fire department headquarters, during grid outages.
About 700,000 homes in the U.S. installed rooftop solar last year, according to the Solar Industries Energy Association.
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