Who actually benefits from rooftop solar?

Rooftop solar’s interaction with net metering rate design is a legitimate policy question. But attributing rising electricity costs to rooftop solar, while leaving the business model of monopoly utilities unexamined, is incomplete analysis — and Globe readers deserve the fuller picture.

Mark Durrenberger

Salem

The writer is founder and president of New England Clean Energy.

Fischer J. Espiritu Argosino and Christopher R. Knittel overlook how rooftop solar actually lowers costs for all ratepayers. By focusing solely on distribution costs, they miss solar’s “peak shaving” effect that delivers significant savings to all ratepayers.

Electricity prices aren’t flat; they vary constantly and often spike when very expensive “peaker plants” fire up to meet afternoon demand. Rooftop solar generates power precisely during these peaks, reducing the total load the grid must supply.

According to ISO-New England data, “behind-the-meter” solar already reduces summer peak demand by over 1,500 megawatts — roughly 6 percent of the entire system load. By displacing expensive peaker plants, solar creates a “price suppression effect.” Recent projections from Synapse Energy Economics show that solar and storage expansion will deliver $313 million in annual savings to Massachusetts customers in 2030.

Rather than a “cost shift,” solar is a value shift: a decentralized power plant that makes the entire New England grid leaner, more resilient, and cheaper for everyone.

Nick d’Arbeloff

Carlisle

The author is president of the Solar Energy Business Association of New England.

The March 24 op-ed concerning rooftop solar was an excellent look into the hidden subsidies making electricity unaffordable in Massachusetts and New England. Unfortunately that isn’t even the complete story.

The rates paid to rooftop solar owners do not recognize that the kilowatts generated are usually generated when energy rates are very low, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on sunny days. Typically, the wholesale rate then is below 5 cents per kilowatt hour. The times when solar is not available and those credits are used include times when it is very cold and dark, and this January and February the price per kilowatt hour ranged up to 40 cents.

The state sees those kilowatts as interchangeable, an even trade, and rooftop solar owners are allowed to swap them without limit. The other 87 percent of us have to pay for that imbalance and make up the 35-cent shortfall.

Rooftop solar was a good start to clean energy 15-20 years ago. Now we need to be more strategic and targeted with our clean energy dollars and get energy and capacity for our dollars.

Solar gives us energy 10 percent of the time. Onshore wind is 45 percent; offshore wind, 55 percent; nuclear is 95 percent; and hydro is 95 percent. Let’s wake up to the reality of the physics and economics of our electric grid.

Phil Shapiro

Westwood

The writer is a former board chair of ISO-New England.

This piece gets one thing right: equity should be at the center of Massachusetts’ energy policy. But its conclusion that rooftop solar shifts costs onto low-income households points in the wrong direction.

Here’s what the authors leave out: Every time a utility builds new infrastructure, those costs are spread across all customers — while the utility itself earns a guaranteed profit. That arrangement has been quietly driving up electricity bills for decades. Singling out rooftop solar as a “cost shift” obscures the much bigger one hiding in plain sight.

The real question is not whether to subsidize energy infrastructure — we always have. It’s who benefits.

For most of that history, the answer has been utility shareholders and wealthier businesses and homeowners. SMART incentives, net metering, and the federal Investment Tax Credit are among the first mechanisms to change that. With these programs, when affordable housing goes solar, savings don’t flow to investors. Instead, they reduce operating costs and get reinvested directly into resident services.

Raising fixed charges or cutting solar compensation won’t lower bills for struggling households. It will simply ensure the savings continue to flow where they always have.

That’s not equity — that’s pulling the ladder up just as more families are being invited to climb it.

Ben Underwood

Boston

The writer is cofounder and co-CEO of Resonant Energy, a company that installs solar for affordable housing and nonprofits.

Re “Why rooftop solar in Mass. is flawed, and how to fix it” (Opinion, March 24): Let’s keep in mind that installing solar panels isn’t just a way to bring down the owners’ electric bills. By investing in rooftop solar, homeowners avoid adding more carbon to the atmosphere, carbon that would only worsen climate change.

We already see record-making blizzards, floods, tornados, and other deadly weather events devastating communities. They force massive spending, both on rebuilding and on preventive measures. Much of this is paid for by our tax dollars. So it seems homeowners who help slow climate change by adding solar panels to their roofs may actually be subsidizing the rest of us, rather than the other way around.

Donna Southwell

Cambridge