DETERMINATION OF APPROPRIATE TARGET AUDIENCE FOR DISTRIBUTED SOLAR GENERATION AMONG US RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL CUSTOMERS

摘要

T his study tries to determine the appropriate targetrnaudience for small-scale distributed solar generation in 30rnbig cities across the US. Residential customers arerndivided into subgroups according to floor space of arnhousing unit. Commercial customers are divided intornsubgroups according to the sector of service they are in.rnConsumption data of residential and commercialrncustomers are gathered from selected variables of ThernResidential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS) fromrn2009 and The Commercial Buildings EnergyrnConsumption Survey (CBECS) from 2003 respectively.rnTypical hourly solar radiation data, which is required torncompute annual solar energy generation, is obtained fromrnthe average of the hourly solar radiation data from the 3-rnyear span from 2003-2005 as reported by the USrnGovernment. The most appropriate target groups arernfound by using a comparison of consumption andrngeneration per sq.ft. data. The results are illustrated inrneight figures for four census divisions.rnReligious and warehouse establishments arernidentified as the entities that stand to benefit the most inrnthe commercial sector from distributed generation (DG)rnin all census divisions. Housing units having betweenrn1,000 and 1,500 square feet are found as the most likelyrnto benefit in the residential sector. Implications forrntailored DG policy and marketing interventions arerndiscussed in relation to the findings of this study.