A new report states adding battery storage to California affordable rental housing could almost double building electricity savings compared to just installing solar panels.
While California has already racked up quite a few solar and battery storage installations, few of these can be found associated with low-income tenants or owners of affordable rental housing – some of this due to a lack of information.
Clean Energy Group, California Housing Partnership, and Center for Sustainable Energy recently partnered with Geli to delve into the economics of solar and energy storage installed in California affordable multifamily rental housing.
California was chosen due to the state’s $1 billion Multifamily Affordable Housing Solar Roofs program that will subsidise the installation solar power systems over ten years, the largest program of its type in the USA.
A solar power system can be designed to supply 100 percent of a building’s electricity consumption through net energy metering, but it may only reduce the bill by half due to demand charges. A demand charge is based on the highest demand for power at any point in time during a billing period. Where solar is used, a day of inclement weather can see demand charges back towards pre-solar levels.
The report states the addition of battery storage can reduce or even eliminate remaining demand charges for affordable housing property owners.
This saving could be achieved very economically. Savings similar to those of solar alone can be realised for around a third of the cost of the solar power system.
“Solar + storage projects result in a significantly shorter payback period than stand-alone solar projects,” states the report.
“While this study only examines a limited number of properties from a small sample size, most affordable housing properties in California that are subject to demand charges are expected to see a similar return on storage investments.”
The report, Closing The California Clean Energy Divide : Reducing Electric Bills in Affordable Multifamily Rental Housing with Solar + Storage, can be downloaded here (PDF)
The organizations state they will another two reports over the next few month addressing some of the remaining challenges of solar and storage in multifamily affordable housing in the state.
