Pollution mitigation and photovoltaic demand-side results from the US Environmental Protection Agency photovoltaic demonstrations

The US Environmental Protection Agency and 21 electric power companies in the United States are conducting two nationwide photovoltaic (PV) demand-side management (DSM) projects. Ascension Technology (AT) is responsible for system design, balance-of-systems equipment design and fabrication, installation supervision, field instrumentation, and data acquisition, monitoring and evaluation. The principal goal of the two projects is to investigate the environmental and demand-side-management (DSM) benefits of distributed, grid-tied PV systems as pollution mitigating energy replacements for fossil fuels. In 1993-4, 11 electric utilities installed PV systems on homes, schools, hospitals, office and light commercial buildings. In 1994-5, 12 electric utilities are installing PV systems on larger commercial, educational and industrial building roof-tops.