Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571

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Resources, Conservation & Recycling

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Full length article

Dynamics of large-scale solar PV adoption feedback effects: A technical,

economic, and environmental assessment
Mingcheng Ren a, Roozbeh Ghasemi a, Masoumeh Khalkhali b, Weiwei Mo a, c, *
a
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, United States
b
Hazen and Sawyer, San Diego, CA, United States
c
Carsey School of Public Policy, University of New Hampshire, NH, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Large residential solar photovoltaic (PV) penetration has a compound effect on the grid load reductions, PV
Solar photovoltaic system hosts’ economic savings, and the achievable environmental benefits, which is not fully understood. This study
Residential adoption combines process-based energy balance modeling, life cycle assessment, regression analysis, and stochastic de­
Process-based energy balance modeling
mand simulations to assess the technical, economic, and environmental tradeoffs under increased residential
Life cycle assessment
solar PV adoption, using Boston, MA as a testbed. It was found that increased PV adoption may lead to a steeper
Stochastic energy demand modeling
Wholesale electricity rate ramp-up in the grid during winter months, but a flattened peak load curve during summer months, emphasizing
the need for seasonal time-of-use rates and energy storage. It also reduces electricity wholesale prices, lowering
PV hosts’ economic benefits by about $15 million under 100 % adoption. The largest buildings present the
highest load reduction (top 5.5 %) and environmental benefits (top 16.6 %), but they are the least cost efficient
(top 14.5 %), requiring tradeoff balance.

1. Introduction Residential PV studies in the past have focused on understanding PV

The residential solar photovoltaic (PV) system adoption has
increased significantly in the US (EIA, 2021a), primarily due to the
reduced cost (Branker et al., 2011), environmental benefits (Sherwani
et al., 2010), and strong policy incentives (e.g., Federal Energy Regu­
latory Commission Order 2222) (FERC, 2020; Li and Yi, 2014). The
benefit of solar PV systems was further manifested during recent
extreme climate events (e.g., 2021 U.S. Northwest heatwave and 2021
Texas winter storm), which resulted in high local/regional electricity
prices (EIA, 2021b; Zamuda et al., 2019). In both events, solar PV was
recognized as an effective energy supply for increased resiliency and for
offsetting the potential effects of excessive high prices for energy users
(Brown et al., 2016; Chesser et al., 2018). Nevertheless, increased PV
penetration can potentially alter the centralized grid’s peak demand
pattern, causing a steeper ramp-up that is more difficult to manage
(Cheng et al., 2015). Furthermore, PV hosts’ cost saving may dissipate
with increasing PV penetration and decreasing grid sell prices (SEIA,
2012). It is hence important to adopt a systematic approach in under­
standing the influence of PV penetration on its technical, economic, and
environmental performances to inform PV planning and management
decisions.
generation potential (Gagnon et al., 2016; Hofierka and Kaňuk, 2009;
Lazzeroni et al., 2015; Robinson et al., 2013; Villavicencio Gastelu et al.,
2018), grid load fluctuations under PV adoption (Cheng et al., 2015;
Eftekharnejad et al., 2013; Thomson and Infield, 2007; Watson et al.,
2016; Westacott and Candelise, 2016), system optimization for peak
load reduction (Alam et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2020), and mitigation of
PV adoption’s load effect on the grid (Aleem et al., 2020; Mukwekwe
et al., 2017; Wajahat et al., 2019). These studies highlighted the
importance of understanding and reducing the effect of increased PV
adoption on the grid’s load fluctuations. Some studies have focused on
understanding the economic aspect of PV adoption, via investigating the
cost saving of individual PV adopters (Agnew et al., 2019; Lee et al.,
2018), potential utility revenue gains and losses (Satchwell et al., 2015),
additional costs to improve distribution power quality due to load
ramp-up caused by increased PV adoption (McHenry et al., 2016), and
optimized PV array design under existing wholesale electricity price
profiles (Brown and O’Sullivan, 2019). These studies often utilize
averaged historical electricity production and rate data (Agnew et al.,
2019; Satchwell et al., 2015), omitting the dynamic interactions be­
tween PV adoption/usage and the wholesale electricity price. Several
other studies were specifically focused on understanding the feedback

* Corresponding author at: 35 Colovos Road, 334 Gregg Hall, Durham, NH 03824.
E-mail address: weiwei.mo@unh.edu (W. Mo).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2024.107571
Received 24 October 2023; Received in revised form 12 March 2024; Accepted 19 March 2024
Available online 22 March 2024
0921-3449/© 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
M. Ren et al.
between PV adoption and electricity rates and reported retail electricity
rate change under various residential PV adoption scenarios (e.g., Cai
et al., 2013; Chesser et al., 2018; Thakur et al., 2018). Their simulations,
nevertheless, are limited in terms of reliance on a pre-defined set energy
demand and supply profiles without stochasticity, and the identified
economic impacts were not contextualized with other types of impacts,
such as grid and environmental effects. The environmental impact of PV
adoption has also been assessed by previous studies, focusing on quan­
tifying and predicting environmental impacts (e.g., carbon emission) of
various PV adoption scenarios (Antonanzas and Quinn, 2021), investi­
gating the key determinants of environmental impact (Blanc et al.,
2008), and examining the influence system configurations and geo­
spatial locations (Lamnatou et al., 2016; Nikolakakis and Fthenakis,
2013; Tsoutsos et al., 2005). These environmental assessments typically
adopted a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. Still, most of these LCA
studies remain static without considering the dynamics in the supply
and demand balance. Unlike those that were focused on a single aspect
of solar PV impacts, some studies included multiple types of impacts (e.
g., technical, economic, and environmental) (Bellocchi et al., 2019;
Deltenre et al., 2020; Imam et al., 2020; Jenniches and Worrell, 2019;
Thoy and Go, 2021). Tradeoffs were often found across the various types
of impacts (Arcos-Vargas et al., 2018; Deltenre et al., 2020; Edalati et al.,
2016; Hosenuzzaman et al., 2015; Imam et al., 2020; Jenniches and
Worrell, 2019; Jurasz et al., 2020; Korsavi et al., 2018; Li et al., 2018;
Thoy and Go, 2021). For instance, several studies have reported trade­
offs between the economic and environmental benefits that can be
reaped through residential PV adoptions (Korsavi et al., 2018; Edalati
et al., 2016; Li et al., 2018). Yet Arcos-Vargas et al. (2018) identified
economic and environmental co-benefits of residential PV adoption.
Previous solar PV assessments typically relied on static, averaged
demand data based on historical records. However, in order to capture
the interactions across the consumers, power grid, renewable energy
generation, and storage, dynamic simulations of electricity demand is
required (McAvoy et al., 2021; Muratori et al., 2013; Shimoda et al.,
2020). There are two ways to simulate the temporal changes of energy
demand, a top-down method and a bottom-up method (Swan and
Ugursal, 2009). The top-down method scales down historical regional
energy demand data to a housing unit based upon macroeconomic or
climate indicators (e.g., family gross income, unemployment conditions,
energy price, and ambient temperature) (Dergiades and Tsoulfidis,
2008; Swan and Ugursal, 2009). The top-down method typically simu­
lates energy demand on an annual basis. Its ability to provide finer
resolution energy demand simulations (e.g., hourly or sub-hourly) for
various household categories can be highly restricted, depending on the
availability and precision of observed energy demand data. For example,
Thomson and Infield (2007) simulated a regional electricity demand
profile by combining measured sample household load data with the
region’s house information (e.g., perimeter footprint, house type). Their
approach relies on a large amount of historical data and lacks trans­
ferability and applicability to other areas. The bottom-up method, on the
other hand, utilizes physical or statistical models to simulate individual
household’s energy consumption and then scale up to regional or na­
tional levels (Arghira et al., 2012; Muratori et al., 2013; Swan and
Ugursal, 2009). For instance, Muratori et al. (2013, 2018) developed a
Markov chain behavioral model to simulate occupants’ energy con­
sumption activities on a 10 min time step using American Time Use
Survey (ATUS) data. Combined with other energy consumption esti­
mations such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and
cold appliances, fine resolution energy demand was stochastically
simulated for 8 types of households and scaled up to a community with
200 residential households.
To gain a comprehensive understanding of the technical, economic,
and environmental tradeoffs of solar PV adoption considering the dy­
namic interactions of electricity supply and demand, an integrated
modeling framework that combines process-based energy balance
modeling, life cycle assessment, regression analysis, as well as stochastic
2
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571
energy demand simulations using the bottom-up method was developed.
This modeling framework was applied to residential buildings in the
metro area of Boston, Massachusetts of the United States as a testbed. PV
adoption scenarios were evaluated based on performance metrics,
including off-, mid-, on-peak load reductions from the grid, life cycle
cost (LCC), cumulative energy demand, carbon emissions, and water
consumption. This study intended to answer the following research
questions: 1) How will increasing PV adoption influence the grid per­
formance, PV hosts’ energy reliance on the grid, life cycle cost, and life
cycle environmental impacts of the PV systems? 2) How does building
size influence the efficiencies in achieving regional load reduction, cost
saving, and environmental benefits?
2. Methods
A process-based solar energy supply and demand simulation frame­
work that runs on a 30 min time step was first developed on a building
scale. A community-scale model was then developed where solar energy
supply was estimated based on the available solar radiation and rooftop
area, and the household energy demand was estimated using a Markov
chain behavioral model on a 1 min time step using American Time Use
Survey (ATUS) data following the method presented in (Muratori et al.,
2013). We then estimated the load reduction, economic cost, and
environmental impacts associated with various adoption scenarios using
a life cycle framework, whenever possible. Particularly, the influence of
solar PV adoption on wholescale electricity price was estimated through
an empirical approach and was factored into our cost estimations. The
entire modeling framework was illustrated through its application in a
typical community in the City of Boston. The community-level results
were then extrapolated to the City of Boston for a simplified city-scale
analysis. Fig. 1 illustrates the integration of various models and
methods in the overall methodological framework of this study.
2.1. Process-based simulation of electricity supply and demand
The type of PV system considered in our assessment is grid-connected
polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) PV system with no battery storage
(Sharma et al., 2015). Panel size for each individual building was
assumed to be 26 % of the available rooftop area (Gagnon et al., 2016;
Melius et al., 2013). Solar energy generation was simulated based on the
30 min solar radiation, ambient temperature, and wind speed data ob­
tained from NREL for the year of 2015. The specific year was selected
based on data completeness. The effect of urban microclimate was not
considered in this study. The PV system degradation rate was assumed to
be 0.5 % per year (Köntges et al., 2016). The PV module efficiency was
assumed to be 15 % (NREL, 2017), and the inverter efficiency was
assumed to be 95 % (HOMER, 2017). These assumptions are relatively
conservative compared to the latest PV technologies. A more detailed
description of the solar electricity generation model can be found in Ren
et al. (2020, 2021). The generated solar energy was prioritized for
meeting the household’s electricity demand, while the surplus was sold
to the grid. Grid sell was assumed to be unconstrainted (Mass.gov,
2020). Time-of-use rates were not considered in this study as these are
currently not in place in the intended study area. Household electricity
demand was simulated as a sum of five types of uses following Muratori
(2018) and Muratori et al. (2013), which include 1) heating, ventilation,
and air conditioning (HVAC), 2) cold appliances, 3) occupants’ activities
(e.g., cooking, dishwashing etc.), 4) lighting, and 5) other fixed uses.
Simulation for each type of demand was introduced in detail in the
following sections.
2.1.1. HVAC
HVAC electricity demand was estimated based upon HVAC config­
uration, the targeted thermal comfort level, local climate, and housing
characteristics (e.g., wall and window areas) using the thermal resis­
tance theory (American Society of Heating, 2009). The HVAC system
M. Ren et al.
Fig. 1. The overall methodological framework of the current study.
was assumed to be air-based given its wide application (U.S. Census
Bureau, 2005). It can operate either in heating or cooling mode, which is
determined by the difference between the ambient temperature and the
targeted thermal comfort level in each time step. The targeted thermal
comfort level was set at 21.1 ± 1 ◦ C. It has to be noted that residential
heating is often provided through fuels (e.g., natural gas, fuel oil) rather
than electricity and some households may not have cooling. The per­
centages of buildings using electricity for heating and cooling were
obtained for the intended study area. We then randomly assign each
building their heating and cooling fuel types (i.e., electricity,
non-electricity) based on these percentages. Each selected building was
assumed to use one centralized HVAC system no matter how many
households reside in the building. More details about the HVAC simu­
lation can be found in the SI.
2.1.2. Cold appliances
The average annual electricity consumption of a U.S. residential
utility customer was 10,649 kWh in 2019 (EIA, 2020a). It was estimated
that about 6 % of the total residential electricity consumption goes to
refrigeration (EIA, 2020b). Therefore, one household’s annual average
refrigeration electricity consumption was estimated to be about 639
kWh. Based on an average nominal power rating of 725 W for cold ap­
pliances (Muratori et al., 2013) and assuming each household possessing
one cold appliance, the averaged operation time of the cold appliance
was estimated to be 881 h. To develop the energy consumption pattern
on a 30 min time step, we assume that each cold appliance runs for three
random 10 min intervals every 5 h following a Bernoulli distribution
(Weisstein, 2002). The impacts of changes in external temperature and
occupants opening the doors of the cold appliances were neglected
(Muratori et al., 2013). More details about the cold appliance simulation
can be found in the SI.
2.1.3. Occupants’ activities
Occupants’ activities were simulated using the Markov chain model
based on the 2019 American Time Use Survey (ATUS) data. An occu­
pant’s activities were assumed to be a combination of 9 activities:
3
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571
sleeping, no-power activity, cleaning, laundry, cooking, automatic
dishwashing, leisure, away (working), and away (not working). The
model was first developed in a 1 min time step in alignment with the
ATUS time resolution, with sleeping as the initial status. The activity
transition from one time step to the next was estimated based on minute-
by-minute transition probability matrices following Eq. (1). These
transition probability matrices were calculated for 5 distinct occupant
types: working males, non-working males, working females, non-
working females, and children. The 1 min transition probability
matrices were then multiplied together to generate 30 min transition
probability matrices, which are consistent with the time step of other
model components and reduce the computational burden.
wk ⋅nd,m
(1)
i,j,k
pd,m
i,j = ∑ ∑ d,m
k j k ⋅ni,j,k
w
Where,
p represents the transition probability.
d indicates either weekdays (d = 1) or weekends (d = 0).
m represents minutes of a day (m = 1,2,…,1440).
i and j are the states of the occupant (activity transition from i to j)
and j = 1, 2, …, 9 (1. Sleep, 2. No-power activity, 3. Cleaning, 4.
Laundry, 5. Cooking, 6. Automatic dishwashing, 7. Leisure, 8. Away,
working, and 9. Away, not working);
k represents the identification of the respondent/occupant type.
wk is the weight placed on the respondent/occupant type from the
ATUS (the weight of data relative to the total population).
nd,m
i,j,k is the number of transitions that respondent k makes from state i
to state j during minute m of day d.
At each time step, the transition probability matrix gives the prob­
ability distribution of an occupant transitioning from a known activity i
to one of the 9 activities, j. A pseudorandom number between [0,1] was
generated to determine which specific activity will be assigned as j. As
such, each occupant’s sequence of activities for an entire year was
simulated. It has to be noted that the first three days of the simulated
activities were not used to minimize the influence of the selected initial
M. Ren et al.
status. Each individual’s activity sequence was then converted into an
electricity demand pattern using the power consumption factors listed in
Table 1 For calculating household-level electricity demand, we first
assigned each household one of the eight specific type as defined by the
US Census (i.e., single-male, single-female, husband-wife family with
one child, husband-wife family without child, single-male family with
one child, singe-female family with one child, two-male, or two-female).
The percent distribution of the eight types of households can be obtained
from the US Census. Occupants were then assigned to each household
according to the household type. The working and non-working condi­
tions of the occupant were generated based upon the local labor force
participation rate obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The
building-level electricity demand was calculated as a sum of all house­
holds’ electricity consumption within the building. More information
about calculations related to occupants’ activity related to electricity
demand can be found in the SI.
2.1.4. Lighting and fixed demand
Lighting electricity consumption was modeled building upon the
occupants’ activities estimated in the previous section. We assumed that
lighting was only on when there was at least one occupant in the house
and doing activities other than sleeping. Daytime and nighttime power
factors for lighting were assumed to be 125 W and 330 W, respectively.
Daytime was assumed to be between sunrise and sunset, while nighttime
was assumed to be the rest of the day. The power factor of the fixed
demand (i.e., constant electric consumption) was assumed to be 230 W
(Muratori et al., 2013).
2.2. The influence of solar energy generation on electricity cost
The influence of solar energy generation on electricity cost was
investigated in two energy pricing scenarios. Scenario 1 (NM) represents
the net metering scenario in which the electricity retail rate and solar
energy selling rate are the same flat rate. In this scenario, the amount of
solar energy generation will not influence its selling price, which aligns
with the utility policy in place in Boston (Eversource, 2023a). An elec­
tricity rate of 14.9 cents/kWh was adopted in our analysis based on
Boston’s electricity rate, which includes the power generation cost (4.34
cents/kWh), the distribution energy charge (7.04 cents/kWh), and the
transmission charge (3.52 cents/kWh) reported from Eversource in
Boston service area (Eversource, 2021). Scenario 2 (WS) is the wholesale
pricing scenario in which the potential influence of solar energy gen­
eration on electricity wholesale price was considered. Electricity
wholesale price is typically updated on a 5 min timestep based on the
supply and demand conditions in the wholesale electricity market
(ISO-NE, 2020a), which further influences the selling price of the solar
PV owners. To capture this dynamic interaction between solar power
generation and solar PV owners’ selling price, an empirical model was
developed based on multi-linear regression using electricity wholesale
rate and grid mix data obtained from the ISO New England between
October 2015 and September 2020 (ISO-NE, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d). The
regression model predicted the New England region’s monthly whole­
sale rate based on the prices, usages, and/or revenues of different types
Table 1
Power consumption factors in the behavioral simulation.
Activity Power consumption (W)
Sleeping 0 We applied life cycle assessment to estimate the cumulative energy
No-power activity 0 demand (CED), water and carbon footprints during the manufacturing,
Cleaning 1250
Laundry 3825
Cooking 1225
Automatic dishwashing 1800
Leisure 300
Away, working 0 (Spanos et al., 2015). The cumulative energy demand V 1.09 method,
Away, not working 0
4
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571
of fuel sources used by the grid. Particularly, the fuel prices including
natural gas (NG), coal, petroleum liquids, nuclear, hydro-electric, solar,
and wind for electric power sector were collected from EIA database
(EIA, 2020c). The fuel revenue was assumed to be the product of the fuel
price and the amount of fuel consumption. The linear regression was
conducted using JMP® Pro 15.0.0 using forward and backward
stop-wise selection method with Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) as
the stopping rule. Table 2 presents the four tested models with different
independent variables as inputs. The model with the highest R2 value
(Model 3) was selected for subsequent analysis. The estimated wholesale
rate was then added with the flat distribution (7.04 cents/kWh) and
transmission (3.52 cents/kWh) rates to estimate the new selling price. In
the meantime, we assumed that the electricity buying rate remains flat
in this scenario as power utilities typically do not adjust their retail rate
on an hourly or daily basis (Eversource, 2023b). Since natural gas is the
dominant marginal fuel use for power generation at the wholesale
market based upon the ISO-NE grid mix database observation (ISO-NE,
2020b,2020c, 2020d), this study assumed that the increase of solar PV
generation will replace the use of natural gas (ISO-NE, 2020d).
2.3. Impact assessment
2.3.1. Load reduction
Load reduction was calculated as the sum of the solar energy used by
the household and sold to the grid at each time step. It was then further
summed for 3 time periods for analysis: off-peak (0:00–8:00 and
19:00–24:00), mid-peak (8:00–14:00), and on-peak (14:00–19:00)
hours following a pilot study conducted by the Liberty Utilities (Teb­
betts, 2018). The percentage of solar electricity usage out of each
building’s total electricity demand was also calculated to reflect its
reliance on or independency from the centralized grid.
2.3.2. Economic cost
We selected life cycle cost (LCC) as our target economic indicator
using the net present value (NPV) method as detailed in Eq. (2). All
future costs were discounted to the year 2021 using an annual discount
rate of 6 % (Freyman, 2021). The capital cost was adapted from the PV
installed prices provided in the Lawrence Berkeley National Labo­
ratory’s Tracking the Sun 2023 Report (LBNL, 2023) based on the
installed panel size of each building (details in Section 2.3 of the SI). The
O&M cost includes the cost for actual grid use and the savings from sales
to the grid from the PV system.
∫( ) ∫( ) ]
n=L [
∑ ruse,t Euse,t dt − rsell,t Esell,t dt
LCC = Cc + (2)
n=0
(1 + i)n
Where,
LCC represents the LCC of a PV system, $.
Cc is the capital cost of the PV system; $.
L is the life span of the PV system, 20 years.
ruse is the electricity rate for grid use, $/kWh.
Euse is the actual grid use, kW.
rsell is the electricity rate for grid sell from the PV system, $/kWh
Esell is the grid sell from the PV system, kW.
i is the discount rate, 6 %
n is the year index.
2.3.3. Environmental impact
transportation, and operation stages of each solar PV system. The use
and selling of solar electricity during the operation stage was counted as
an impact reduction. The maintenance and end-of-life stages were not
included in our analysis due to their previously reported insignificance
the Berger et al., 2014 Water Scarcity method, and the IPCC 2013 GWP
M. Ren et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571

Table 2
Simulated models for regression analysis.
Parameters (Param.)1 and coefficients (Coef.) Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 (selected) Model 4

Input param. Coef. Input param. Coef. Input param. Coef. Input param. Coef.

AIC 440.79 451.61 395.1 406.75

BIC 451.77 459.26 407.61 416.11
R-square Adj 0.7 0.62 0.86 0.82
Intercept – -6.34 – 91.6 – -30.7 – -9.34
Coal use, MWh x 0 x 0
Coal price, $/MWh x 0 x 0
Coal revenue, $ x 0
NG use, MWh x 5.59E-06 x 3.15E-06
NG price, $/MWh x 5.64 x 2.79
NG revenue, $ x 5.92E-07
Hydro use, MWh x 0 x 0
Hydro price, $/MWh x 0 x 0
Hydro revenue, $ x 0
Nuclear use, MWh x 0 x 0
Nuclear price, $/MWh x -4.42 x 0
Nuclear revenue, $ x 0
Oil use, MWh x 7.70E-05 x 6.14E-05
Oil price, $/MWh x 0 x 0.36
Oil revenue, $ x 1.30E-06
Refuse, MWh x 0 x 0
Refuse revenue, $ x 0
Solar use, MWh x -4.59E-05 x 0
Wind use, MWh x 1.06E-04 x 5.10E-05
Solar/Wind price, $/MWh x 0 x 0
Solar revenue, $ x 0
Wind revenue, $ x 3.03E-06

20a method embedded in SimaPro were used for estimating CED, water
footprint, and carbon footprint, respectively. The SimaPro entries, unit
cost and environment impact of the PV system components are provided
in the SI. For the use phase, time-varying carbon emission factors of the
regional grid supply were used (Fig. 2) following (Ren et al., 2021).
These carbon emission factors were calculated based upon the 2019 New
England utility fuel mix profile obtained from the Independent System
Operator-New England (ISO-NE) database (ISO-NE, 2020d). The CED
and water factors were estimated using the U.S. electricity grid supply
entry from SimaPro.
3. Case study
The City of Boston was selected as our testbed due to its solar po­
tential and strong policy incentives (Burns and Kang, 2012; Eid et al.,
2014; Heeter et al., 2014). We tested our modeling framework on two
scales. First, a community of 209 households (145 buildings) located in
the City of Boston, MA was modeled, which has similar household type
distribution as compared to the City of Boston (Table S2 of the SI). The
detailed building level information was obtained from Boston’s GIS data
portal (COB, 2019), which include attributes such as street name and
number, living area, number of floors, and number of household units
within the building. Each building’s rooftop area was calculated by
dividing the living area by the number of floors (COB, 2019). We
assumed that 15.3 % (Mass.gov, 2018) and 79 % (EIA, 2009) of the
buildings use electricity for heating and for cooling, respectively. The
communities’ labor force participation rates for males and females were
assumed to be 69.2 % and 57.4 % respectively (BLS, 2020). Daily sunrise
and sunset times were obtained from the National Oceanic and Atmo­
spheric Administration (NOAA, 2021).
The technical, economic, and environmental results simulated for
the 145 buildings in the selected community representing the average
condition were extrapolated to a total of 68,692 residential buildings in
the city of Boston simply based on the 145:68,692 building number
ratio. It has to be noted that the Boston building dataset contains 68,698
buildings and 6 buildings were removed from the analysis given missing
building story information from these data entries. We sorted the
buildings based upon their available rooftop area for PV installation. A
larger rooftop area for PV installation usually represents a higher po­
tential for solar generation, therefore incentivizing these PV hosts may
lead to higher economic and environmental benefits (Gagnon et al.,
2016; Ren et al., 2020). Based on an order of buildings with larger to
smaller rooftop areas, we investigated the influence of varied solar PV
adoption rate on the load, economic, and environmental performances.
We also compared our simulated demand pattern for the City of Boston
with the ISO-NE residential demand dataset and found our simulation
could effectively capture the features of the actual demand pattern in
terms of the monthly average consumption and seasonality (Figure S19
of the SI).

4. Results and discussion

Below we discuss the extrapolated results for the City of Boston. The
community-level results present a similar trend, which are detailed in
Section 3 of the SI.

4.1. Load reductions

Fig. 2. Carbon emission factors of ISO-NE grid supply over a year. Fig. 3 presents the load reductions and household energy

5
M. Ren et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571

4
Off-peak Direct sol
solar use
Demand, 100 GWh
Mid-p
peak
Mid-peak
3.5

Load reduction, 100 GWh

peak
off-peak 3.80 On-peak
( )Solar energy use onsite
onsit %
3 mid-peak
peak 2.28
2.52
2.5 on-peak
peak 3.51
2.07 (63.5%))
annual
al total 9.59
2
1.48 (68.2%))
1.5
(69.5%))
0.9
0.94
1 0 79
0.79
0.79 0 77
0.77
0.77 (19.8%)
(67.4%)
4%))
0.55 (21.9%)
(21.9%))

0.5 0 29
0.29
0.29 ((22.8%)
22.8%))
0 23
0.23
0.23 0 28
0.28
0.28
09
0.09 ((22.2%)
22.2%))0.16
(5.1%))
(5.0%) (5.5%)) ((5.5%)
5.5%))
0
25% 50% 75% 100%
Adoption percentage
Fig. 3. Load reductions of four PV adoption percentages during off-, mid-, and on-peak periods. Percentages in parentheses were calculated as the amount of solar
energy used onsite divided by the PV hosts’ total electricity demand.

independence results during off-peak, mid-peak, and on-peak periods

when the top 25 %, 50 %, 75 %, and 100 % buildings with the largest
rooftop areas in the City of Boston adopt solar PV. Overall, the house­
hold, distributed rooftop solar PV generation can provide a maximum
load reduction of 374 GWh under 100 % adoption, which can meet a
maximum of about 39 % of the residential electricity demand. This
number would be only about 12 % if the commercial and industrial
electricity demands are considered (EIA, 2022). The top 25 % of the
buildings represent 31 % of the load reduction potential, while the
bottom 25 % of the buildings represent only about 18 % of the load
reduction potential. Direct solar use, or in other words, the
self-consumption of the generated solar energy, is about 1.3 times of the
selling of the excess solar energy to the grid when the top 25 % buildings
are considered. This number is about 1.7 times when all buildings are
considered. This aligns with the fact that larger buildings tend to pro­
duce more excess solar energy for sale. Out of the four studied adoption
rates, the solar hosts’ average electricity independence is the highest
under the 50 % adoption rate, as indicated by the percentages of solar
energy used onsite (calculated as the ratio of direct solar use and Fig. 4. Load reduction change rates under different adoption percentages. The
load reduction change per adoption percent change was calculated as (change
household’s total energy demand) shown in parentheses in Fig. 3. This is
of direct solar energy consumption onsite + change of grid sell from the PV
because larger buildings tend to have a larger electricity demand that is
systems)/increase of adoption percentage.
more difficult to be solely met by solar energy given the potential
mismatch in the timing of solar energy generation and demand, while
load reduction benefits, given their large solar generation potential. The
smaller buildings tend to have a smaller solar energy generation ca­
change rate remains relatively stable with a slight downward trend
pacity to meet its demand. Mid-sized buildings, on the other hand, are
between the 5.5 % and 88.3 % adoption rates. After 88.3 % adoption
shown to have the largest potential to utilize their generated solar en­
rate, the rate of load reduction change drops quickly again, indicating
ergy onsite. From a temporal perspective, mid-peak hours present the
the significant ineffectiveness of the bottom 11.7 % buildings in
highest load reduction and percent solar energy use onsite regardless of
providing load reduction benefits. When looking at the off-peak, mid-
the adoption rate. This is because the mid-peak hours typically coincide
peak, and on-peak hours separately, it is observed that the mid-peak
with the time with the highest solar radiation, and hence the largest
hours have the largest influence on the load reduction changes. Over­
solar generation potential. On-peak and off-peak hours, on the other
all, although the largest load reduction is achieved at 100 % PV adop­
hand, are usually in the late afternoon and early morning/night
tion, the top 5.5 % buildings present the highest efficiency in load
respectively when the solar radiation is more limited. For the ISOs, this
reduction.
indicates the importance of implementing energy storage and
Fig. 5 further presents the simulated monthly and hourly patterns of
time-varying energy system control to match the solar use and solar grid
residential grid use under various adoption rates. Fig. 5(a) shows that PV
feed-in time with the on-peak window to achieve the optimal on-peak
adoption presents the largest load reduction from the centralized grid
grid load reduction. Uncontrolled PVs without energy storage may not
during July and August, and the smallest load reduction during
be the optimal solution for the energy users who intend to increase
November to January. This is largely influenced by the seasonal varia­
energy security through eliminating grid reliance by PV adoption.
tions in solar generation potential. The largest benefit is seen with the
Looking at the load reduction change rates under varied adoption
adoption of the top 50 % of buildings. On a typical winter day,
percentages (Fig. 4), the load reduction change per adoption percent
increasing PV adoption could potentially lead to a steeper ramp-up
change rapidly decreases during the initial 5.5 % of PV adoption. This
curve (duck curve) and adding undesired stress on the centralized
indicates the high effectiveness of the top 5.5 % buildings in providing

6
M. Ren et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571

Fig. 5. Simulated residential grid use by month (a), in a typical winter day (b), and in a typical summer day (c) under different PV adoption rates.

grid. This is a result of a combination of a large load reduction during the
mid-peak hours and very limited load reductions during on- and off-peak
hours. On a typical summer day, however, increasing PV adoption can
effectively flatten the peak load curve. This indicates the significance of
implementing seasonal time-of-use rate designs to achieve an optimal
peak shave outcome for the utilities, especially during the winter
months. Energy storage, peak-oriented renewable resources, and de­
mand response programs may play a significant role in peak demand
control during the winter months (Lazar, 2016).
4.2. Economic costs
constantly higher solar grid sell price compared to the time varying WS
rates. It also indicates that with the increasing solar energy in the grid
mix, electricity wholesale price is likely to drop, which reduces the
economic saving that can be reaped by the PV hosts, although our
analysis suggests that the reduction is likely to be small. Under a 100 %
adoption rate, the difference between the NM and WS scenarios amounts
to $15 million dollars. The rate of LCC change is the fastest when the PV
adoption rate is relatively small (0–14.5 %) under both rate designs. This
is mainly because of the large infrastructure cost associated with the
larger rooftop area acquired by the top buildings, as well as the large
generation to demand ratio. The lowest LCC per building is achieved at
around 69.7 % adoption rate.

Fig. 6 presents the total operational cost savings as well as the

average LCCs of the simulated PV systems per building under different 4.3. Environmental impacts
adoption rates. The NM rate design consistently presents a slightly lower
LCC regardless of the adoption rate as compared to the WS rate design. Fig. 7 presents the average life cycle CED, water consumption, and
This is because the PV hosts using the NM design can take advantage of a carbon emission effects of the simulated PV systems per building under

Fig. 6. (a) Operational cost savings from direct onsite solar use and grid sell of the net metering (NM) and wholesale (WS) price designs under different PV adoption
percentages; (b) Life cycle cost change per adoption percent change under NM and WS price design scenarios.

7
M. Ren et al. Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571

Fig. 7. (a) Life cycle environmental costs per PV-adopted building under different adoption percentages; (b) life cycle environmental cost change per adoption
percent change.

different adoption rates. Results show all simulated PV systems present carbon emission curve, which aligns with the load reduction results. On
life cycle environmental benefits, as indicated by the negative values in a typical summer day, increasing PV adoption is likely to shift the carbon
Fig. 7(a). The life cycle environmental benefit per building decreases emission peak time as well as to shorten the peak duration. While carbon
quickly within the first 16.6 % of adoption (Fig. 7(b)). After that, the management is typically less sensitive to daily or monthly patterns, our
environmental benefit stabilizes with a slight decreasing trend. This results confirm the varying seasonal and hourly benefits that might be
indicates that the top 16.6 % of buildings can provide the highest provided by solar PV installations, which informs more precise future
environmental benefit compared with the remaining buildings. carbon management strategies.
Fig. 8 further presents the simulated daily, monthly, and hourly
patterns of the carbon footprint of residential buildings under various
4.4. Load reduction, economic, and environmental tradeoffs
adoption rates. Fig. 8(a) and (b) show that the highest daily carbon
footprint is observed around July, while the monthly trend shows two
Our analysis shows strategies for effective load and environmental
prominent peaks, one during July and August, and the other during
impact reductions may be at odds with strategies for effective cost
January and February. This is resulted from a combination of high
reduction. While the load reduction and the environmental benefits per
electricity demands during both peaks, as well as a “dirtier” grid mix
building are the highest in the buildings with the largest rooftop areas,
during summer months, as reflected in the unit carbon emission factors
their life cycle economic costs are also the highest. This aligns with
shown in Fig. 1. A high solar PV adoption can significantly decrease the
findings from previous studies (Korsavi et al., 2018; Li et al., 2018).
carbon footprint, especially for the summer months; however, the
When examining the changes in these three indicators concerning
decrease is the most effectively seen in the top 50 % buildings. On a
adoption, the adoption of the top 5.5 % buildings presents the fastest
typical winter day, increasing PV adoption is likely to steepen the hourly
increase in load reduction while the adoption of the top 16.6 % buildings

Fig. 8. (a) Daily carbon emission and (b) monthly carbon emission of residential grid use over a year under different PV adoption percentages; carbon emission of
grid use (c) in a typical winter day and (d) a typical summer day under different PV adoptions.

8
M. Ren et al.
presents the fastest increase in environmental impact reduction.
Nevertheless, the adoptions in the top 14.5 % of buildings also represent
the fastest decrease in life cycle cost. These buildings are primarily
multi-unit apartment buildings. It has been reported that solar PV
adoption in such buildings could potentially be hindered by the financial
hurdle imposed by the large capital cost and the complexity in the
governance and/or the competition of the rooftop area (Roberts et al.,
2019). To balance this tradeoff, it is important to investigate potential
incentives or financial models to reduce the economic barrier for
buildings with large rooftop areas to adopt solar PV systems, or to
develop strategies that increase the load reduction and environmental
efficiencies of PV systems installed in buildings with smaller rooftop
areas. Another tradeoff observed was that while the 100 % PV adoption
provides the largest overall load reduction and environmental benefits,
it presents sub-optimal energy independence from the centralized grid.
Mid-sized buildings were found to be the most effective in utilizing their
generated solar energy for meeting their own energy demand. As energy
independence could be associated with system resilience, strategies to
increase energy independence, such as demand response management,
innovative prosumer pricing policies, as well as energy trading and
sharing strategies are desirable for achieving enhanced energy resilience
(Boiarkin et al., 2023). PV adoption in Boston is also likely to cause a
steeper ramp-up in the centralized grid system during winter months;
however, they are likely to flatten the curve during summer months.
Given this, it is important to identify strategies to counter the effect of
steeper ramp up as a result of an increased solar PV adoption during the
winter months. Such strategies may include utilizing peak-oriented
renewable energy resources (e.g., impoundment hydropower),
enhancing energy storage capacities (e.g., battery systems, pumped
storage, water and wastewater pumping loads), implementing demand
response programs, among others (Lazar, 2016).
5. Conclusions
This study presents a modeling framework that combines process-
based energy balance modeling, LCA, regression analysis, as well as
stochastic energy demand simulations to investigate various technical,
economic, and environmental tradeoffs under increased residential solar
PV adoption. This modeling framework was applied to residential
buildings in the metro area of Boston, Massachusetts. We found that the
household, distributed rooftop solar PV generation can provide a
maximum load reduction of 374 GWh under 100 % adoption rate, which
is about 39 % of the total residential electricity demand. While the top
5.5 % of buildings with the largest rooftop areas provide the highest load
reduction potential, the solar hosts’ average electricity independence is
the highest under the 50 % adoption rate. From a temporal perspective,
mid-peak hours present the highest load reduction and percent solar
energy use onsite regardless of the adoption rate. On a typical winter
day, increasing PV adoption could potentially lead to a steeper ramp-up
curve in the centralized grid, while on a typical summer day, increasing
PV adoption may effectively flatten the peak load curve. This indicates
the significance of implementing seasonal time-of-use rate designs as
well as energy storage systems. Our study also confirmed that an
increased solar adoption is likely to lead to a decreased electricity
wholesale price, which reduces the economic saving that can be reaped
by the PV hosts, although our analysis suggests that the reduction is
likely to be small (about $15 million overall under 100 % adoption).
From an environmental perspective, we found that the top 16.6 % of
buildings can provide the highest environmental benefit compared with
the remaining buildings. Furthermore, solar PV adoption is likely to
impact the daily carbon emission curves differently in summer and
winter months. This finding may benefit more precise carbon manage­
ment. Overall, it was found that strategies aimed at achieving substan­
tial load and environmental impact reductions may conflict with those
focused on cost-effectiveness. The largest buildings that present the most
significant load reduction and environmental benefit also present the
9
Resources, Conservation & Recycling 205 (2024) 107571
least life cycle cost efficiency based on per adoption percent change. It is
hence crucial to explore potential incentives and financial models that
alleviate the potential economic barriers for buildings with large rooftop
areas or to develop strategies that enhance the load reduction and
environmental efficiencies of PV systems implemented in buildings with
more limited rooftop space. It is also important to identify strategies for
effectively managing the steeper ramp-up as a result of an increased
solar PV adoption, especially during the winter months. Future studies
may further include energy storage systems and related management
strategies to allow for a more comprehensive understanding of different
types of PV systems and the influence of their large penetrations on load
reduction, economic, and environmental aspects.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Mingcheng Ren: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original
draft, Visualization, Validation, Methodology, Investigation, Formal
analysis, Data curation. Roozbeh Ghasemi: Writing – review & editing,
Investigation, Formal analysis. Masoumeh Khalkhali: Formal analysis.
Weiwei Mo: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision,
Resources, Project administration, Methodology, Investigation, Funding
acquisition, Conceptualization.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial
interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence
the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the National Science Foundation’s support via a
CBET award (#1706143). The views, findings, and conclusions
expressed in this study are those of the authors and do not necessarily
reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Supplementary materials
Supplementary material associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2024.107571.
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