astronomy

The Alliance for Solar Choice

The Alliance for Solar Choice is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The Alliance for Solar Choice rather than just read about it. In short: The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) leads rooftop solar power advocacy efforts across the United States. Founded by the largest rooftop solar energy companies in the United States of America, TASC represents the vast majority of the rooftop solar market.

Key takeaways

The Alliance for Solar Choice belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The Alliance for Solar Choice to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The Alliance for Solar Choice from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Alliance for Solar Choice (TASC) leads rooftop solar power advocacy efforts across the United States. Founded by the largest rooftop solar energy companies in the United States of America, TASC represents the vast majority of the rooftop solar market. Its members include: Demeter Power Group, SunTime Energy, Geostellar, Inc., LGCY Power, Sunrun, and Solar Universe.

Activities TASC member companies are responsible for thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousands of rooftop solar installations on homes, schools, businesses, and government buildings across the country. According to recent Center for American Progress (CAP) studies, rooftop solar systems are now seeing overwhelming adoption in middle-class neighborhoods with median incomes ranging from $40,000 to $90,000.

Overview

EEI Publishes "Disruptive Challenges" In January 2013, the utility trade association Edison Electric Institute (EEI) issued a report titled “Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business”. The report describes the increasing popularity of consumer-driven rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and demand response as a “vicious cycle.” It details how utilities view rooftop solar as a “disruption” to their current business model, which guarantees utilities specific profit margins from large infrastructure projects funded by ratepayers. Peter Kind of Energy Infrastructure Advocates, the author of the report, makes recommendations on how electric utilities can defend against these ‘disruptive challenges.’ TASC and others in the solar industry have been working since 2013 to defend against utility attacks on core rooftop solar policies across the country.

Net Energy Metering and Opposition to Solar Net energy metering, or ‘NEM’, provides full retail credit to residents, businesses, schools, and other public agencies when their solar systems export surplus energy to the grid. The utility then ends up selling this surplus energy to other customers nearby. Utility companies typically oppose widespread NEM adoption and have attempted to block the growth of rooftop solar usage, a strategy reported by the press. Another utility strategy in opposition to solar has been to introduce legislation to monopolize the rooftop solar market. In 2014, utilities in South Carolina and Washington pushed legislation with this intention. TASC successfully lead efforts to defeat both attempts.

VOSTs, FITs and Their Weaknesses Utilities also advocate for Value of Solar Tariffs (VOSTs) and Feed-in Tariffs (FITs). As revealed by national law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom LLP, VOSTs create hidden taxes for consumers. In addition, VOSTs create annual market uncertainty that can hurt solar businesses, and they eliminate a customer’s right to actually use the power they generate. This right to use the power produced from solar panels on-site is philosophically important for many solar customers. With VOSTs and FITs, utilities control a homeowner’s solar energy. The homeowner has to sell all of their solar power to the utility as it’s produced. They buy all of the electricity they consume from the utility. The utility determines the price the homeowner receives for the solar power, and the homeowner – as indicated by the Skadden tax memo from – could be required to pay taxes on these payments. The payment price fluctuates according to utility calculations, so it is unpredictable from year to year.

Barclays PLC Downgrade Following the recent, concerted attacks from utilities, in May 2014, Barclays PLC downgraded the entire electric utility sector due to a confluence of declining cost trends in distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) power generation and because residential-scale power storage is likely to disrupt the status quo. The Barclays report highlights that "regulators are ultimately answerable to voters, and the latter are unlikely to tolerate a long halt in their ability to access a clearly beneficial product."

Member Companies The founding members of TASC represent the vast majority of the nation’s rooftop solar market and include Demeter Power Group, Silevo, SolarCity, Solar Universe, Sunrun, and ZEP Solar.

Leadership Sunrun SVP of Public Policy Bryan Miller is the Chairman of The Alliance for Solar Choice.

References

External links Official Website

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The Alliance for Solar Choice

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The Alliance for Solar Choice claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The Alliance for Solar Choice before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The Alliance for Solar Choice ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The Alliance for Solar Choice

In research: The Alliance for Solar Choice appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The Alliance for Solar Choice in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The Alliance for Solar Choice is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Environmental organizations established in 2013, Renewable resource companies established in 2013, Solar energy organizations, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The Alliance for Solar Choice outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “The Alliance for Solar Choice” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study The Alliance for Solar Choice in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The Alliance for Solar Choice means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The Alliance for Solar Choice out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The Alliance for Solar Choice in simple terms?

Why does The Alliance for Solar Choice matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The Alliance for Solar Choice?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The Alliance for Solar Choice.