Government Incentives for Solar Power

Today, Chi­na, Japan, the USA and India remain to be the world’s top solar pow­er pro­duc­ers. For the past 15 years, the glob­al use of solar ener­gy has surged to around 20% and the glob­al out­put pro­duced by solar PV is increas­ing by 50% every year. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty aware­ness, prac­ti­cal­i­ty and entic­ing gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tions are only some of the fac­tors that is impact­ing this big switch.

Spurred on by the grow­ing issues of cli­mate change and fluc­tu­at­ing util­i­ty costs, more and more con­sumers are now shift­ing to renew­able sources of ener­gy like solar pan­els (also known as solar pho­to­volta­ic pan­els or sim­ply solar PV).

Aside from liv­ing sus­tain­ably, the use of solar ener­gy is proven to be finan­cial­ly reward­ing — elim­i­nate pay­ing for your month­ly bills for good, save mon­ey in the long run and take advan­tage of gov­ern­ment incen­tives for installing res­i­den­tial and com­mer­cial solar pan­els.

If you aren’t con­vinced yet of solar PV ben­e­fits and lucra­tive incen­tives, then please keep read­ing.

The Growth of Solar Energy Production in the World

Today, Chi­na, Japan, the USA and India remain to be the world’s top solar pow­er pro­duc­ers. For the past 15 years, the glob­al use of solar ener­gy has surged to around 20% and the glob­al out­put pro­duced by solar PV is increas­ing by 50% every year. Sus­tain­abil­i­ty aware­ness, prac­ti­cal­i­ty and entic­ing gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tions are only some of the fac­tors that is impact­ing this big switch.

In Ger­many for instance, the share of solar pow­er in total pow­er gen­er­a­tion is at 10%. Inter­est­ing­ly, there are about 2 mil­lion pho­to­volta­ic sys­tems that gen­er­at­ed 51.4 ter­awatt-hours of elec­tric­i­ty in 2020 — a big leap com­pared to 3.1 ter­awatt-hours back in 2007. Togeth­er with Chi­na, Japan, the USA and India, Ger­many is now con­sid­ered as one of the largest pro­duc­ers of solar pow­er in the world.

These num­bers make it clear that some­thing real­ly big is hap­pen­ing here. The notice­able effects of cli­mate change remind us of the urgency to shift our ener­gy pro­duc­tion to some­thing that is renew­able and much more sus­tain­able. Solar pow­er gen­er­a­tion has to be expand­ed much fur­ther and gov­ern­ments are keep­ing their momen­tum through the pro­vi­sion of solar pow­er incen­tives and fund­ing pro­grams. Such gov­ern­ment incen­tives vary by loca­tion. Let’s explore a few exam­ples.

The Unit­ed States offers great incen­tives for its cit­i­zens to go solar. The NL Clean Ener­gy Tech­nol­o­gy Cen­ter cre­at­ed a com­pre­hen­sive data­base to sum­ma­rize applic­a­ble incen­tives and poli­cies by state. Inter­est­ing­ly, the Gold­en State of Cal­i­for­nia is doing impres­sive work on solar incen­tives mak­ing them a true leader for solar pow­er gen­er­a­tion in the US. Here are some of the renew­able ener­gy incen­tives imple­ment­ed in Cal­i­for­nia:

  • The Solar Invest­ment Tax Cred­it (ITC) is a fed­er­al incen­tive that offers a whop­ping 26% tax cred­it. When you file your tax­es, the Solar ITC pro­vides a cash­back on the annu­al tax­es and is usu­al­ly com­put­ed as a per­cent­age of the aggre­gate cost;
  • More­over, Cal­i­for­nia also has the Net Ener­gy Meter­ing (NEM) which trans­fers all unuti­lized solar ener­gy back to the util­i­ty com­pa­ny. In return, solar PV users are paid in a form of cred­it for all excess solar ener­gy sent to their sys­tem. This set­up ensures that no ener­gy is wast­ed and ordi­nary home­own­ers that gen­er­ate excess solar ener­gy have the pow­er to sell it — tru­ly an amaz­ing deal!

In the case of Cana­da, they pro­vide solar incen­tives at the provin­cial lev­el in the form of cash­back, dis­counts, insur­ance, tax cred­its and more. Spe­cif­ic gov­ern­ment incen­tives and pro­grams are like­wise found on the dig­i­tal plat­form at Nat­ur­al Resources Cana­da.

Chi­na remains to be the largest solar pow­er pro­duc­er in the world, fol­lowed by the USA, then Japan. Ger­many and India are list­ed in fourth and fifth place.

The first gov­ern­ment sub­sidy pro­grams for solar pow­er can be traced in Chi­na which has been exist­ing as ear­ly as the late 1990s. This gov­ern­ment ini­tia­tive encour­aged China’s solar pow­er mar­ket to flour­ish and fuel its con­tin­ued growth. At present, the solar pow­er sub­scrip­tion is now high­er than the avail­able gov­ern­ment fund­ing at hand. This result­ed in a slight adjust­ment in the gov­ern­ment sub­sidy on offer.

In 2020, gov­ern­ment solar fund­ing was only half as large as in 2019. In the future, the Chi­nese solar pow­er sub­si­dies can be used more effi­cient­ly, but fund­ing should con­tin­ue to exist: rough­ly half of China’s 31 provinces already have 5‑year plans for 2021–2025 that sup­port the pro­mo­tion on renew­able ener­gies like solar ener­gy.

Since 2015, the solar pow­er gen­er­a­tion in India has increased by almost 9x. Rel­a­tive­ly, solar pow­er in India remains very cheap result­ing in more patron­age from their res­i­dents.

In 2019 the Indi­an gov­ern­ment raised over 2.5 bil­lion euros in the solar pow­er sub­sidy. As part of a Ger­man-Indi­an solar part­ner­ship, a Є200 mil­lion loan agree­ment with the Indi­an Renew­able Ener­gy Devel­op­ment Agency (IREDA) and Kred­i­tanstalt für Wieder­auf­bau (KfW) was com­plet­ed. The mon­ey is giv­en to Indi­an investors in the form of low-inter­est rates loans.

The solar indus­try is con­stant­ly inno­vat­ing, improv­ing and grow­ing. And while there are many solar installers out there, only a hand­ful of them can offer real val­ue for your solar pan­el invest­ment.

At PADCON, our decades of expe­ri­ence in the solar indus­try guar­an­tees ener­gy-effi­cient, high-qual­i­ty solar pow­er sys­tems and inno­v­a­tive tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments. Our anti-PID (poten­tial induced degra­da­tion) sys­tem is one of a kind — yield­ing the high­est ener­gy effi­cien­cy, mak­ing us a true mar­ket leader for this seg­ment.

Con­tact us to get the best pos­si­ble solar prod­ucts and ben­e­fit from your state-sub­si­dized solar pow­er plants today!

Solar Power for Home and Commercial Use

It’s nev­er too late to get start­ed with solar pow­er tech­nol­o­gy. With the lucra­tive gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies dis­cussed above, you get to enjoy more ben­e­fits than the tra­di­tion­al ener­gy sources.

Gen­er­at­ing your own renew­able ener­gy is cer­tain­ly excit­ing! Instead of rely­ing heav­i­ly on high-priced ener­gy, con­sumers can tick off their month­ly ener­gy expens­es and allo­cate this bud­get some­where else. The high­er the month­ly bill, the big­ger the sav­ings. Cer­tain­ly, installing a solar pan­el in your home or busi­ness can yield almost zero ener­gy costs for a long time.

With sus­tain­abil­i­ty and finan­cial via­bil­i­ty in mind, home­own­ers and busi­ness own­ers can dra­mat­i­cal­ly change their ener­gy con­sump­tion by installing solar pan­els.

Thank­ful­ly. the cost of solar PV has declined over the years. Thus, the upfront cost for installing solar pow­er today looks more wal­let-friend­ly along­side solar pan­el incen­tives you get from the gov­ern­ment, util­i­ty com­pa­ny as well as solar installers them­selves.

Mov­ing for­ward, you are in the posi­tion to make a sus­tain­able invest­ment now!