Eco-Living Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 at 5:43 pm

“Major Epidemic Levels” of Solar Contagion Expected

A new study on the neighborhood effect of solar power found that “solar is contagious.” The report cites a 1% decrease in the time between individual solar panel installations in a single ZIP code for each 1% increase in solar panel installations.

Renewable Energy World took a look at the numbers and found that:

if you start with 25 solar installations but with a time between installs of just 30 days. By the 250th PV project, the time between installs has dropped to 3 days. And because the lag time between installations started so much lower, the 10-fold drop in lag time takes less than 5 years…

Report author Adam Brown of Vote Solar noted that while the current strain of solar is not as virulent as future strains, “major epidemic levels of contagion” are expected as solar panel prices continue to fall sharply.

Multiple Los Angeles County neighborhoods participated in last year’s Open Neighborhoods Community Solar program, which drove the cost of solar panels to new lows. Seeking to accelerate local adoption of renewable energy, neighborhood councils in Silver Lake, Mar Vista, and Venice have all unanimously voted on neighborhood goals of 100% clean power by 2018.