Growth in renewable energy in the U.S. over the past decade has been propelled by a number of forces, including rising fossil fuel prices, environmental concerns, and policy support at the state and federal levels. In this article, we review and discuss what are arguably the two most important...

As a market segment for solar photovoltaic (PV) adoption, new homes have a number of attractive attributes. Homebuyers can easily roll the cost of the PV system into their tax-deductible home mortgage and, with rebates and other financial incentives, potentially achieve an immediate net-positive...

The long economic lifetime and development lead-time of many electric infrastructure investments requires that utility resource planning consider potential costs and risks over a lengthy time horizon. One long-term -- and potentially far-reaching -- risk currently facing the electricity industry...

This study analyzes the potential impact of state tax incentives on the federal production tax credit (PTC) for large-scale wind power projects. While the federal PTC provides critical support to wind plants in the U.S., its so-called ''double-dipping'' provisions may also diminish the value of...

Dynamic retail electricity pricing, especially real-time pricing (RTP), has been widely heralded as a panacea for providing much-needed demand response in electricity markets. However, in designing default service for competitive retail markets, demand response often appears to be an...

Readily accessible credit has often been cited as a necessary ingredient to open up the market for residential photovoltaic (PV) systems. Though financing does not reduce the high up-front cost of PV, by spreading that cost over some portion of the system's life, financing can certainly make PV...

Development of renewable energy. Such programs have grown in number in recent years. The design features and effectiveness of these programs varies considerably, however, leading a variety of stakeholders to suggest specific marketing and program design features that might improve customer...