Closing the Clean Energy Divide: Reducing Electric Bills in Affordable Multifamily Rental Housing with Solar+Storage

This report examines the utility bill impacts of adding battery storage to stand-alone solar in affordable rental housing facilities in California’s three investor-owned utility service territories, each with different rate structures. It is the first such report ever completed on these technologies in this sector in California.

The report reaches several key conclusions:

• Under current utility rate tariffs, the combination of solar and storage technologies could virtually eliminate electric bills for many owners of affordable housing properties. Unlike stand-alone solar, which reduces energy consumption expenses but does little to offset demand related charges, a properly sized solar and battery storage system can eliminate nearly all elec-tricity expenses, resulting in an annual electric utility bill of less than a few hundred dollars in some cases.

• It makes good economic sense today for solar and battery storage to be installed in affordable multifamily rental housing in California. The addition of battery storage to solar improves the economics of each property analyzed across all utility territories, reducing project payback by over three years in some cases.

• The addition of storage technologies has the potential to nearly double stand-alone solar electricity bill savings at about a third of the cost of solar. For example, the addition of a $112,100 battery storage system to a $385,000 solar installation increased savings from $15,000 per year to $27,900, an 85 percent increase in savings for only a 29 percent increase in cost.