Monetary Benefits of Solar Energy for Smart Cities Development

As cities expand, so does their energy use. And as cities strive to become “smart,” renewable solar and wind power can play a crucial role in helping them achieve their goals. Therefore, this research paper analyzes the effect of using renewable energy on households energy cost. For this propose, primary data was collected from 100 households using a structured questionnaire through purposive sampling technique. Furthermore, the linear regression model was applied to analyze the hypotheses and findings indicate that the use of solar energy has a negative and significant effect on household energy cost in Bahrain. Moreover, the empirical findings also confirmed that the total income of the household significantly and positively moderates the effect of solar energy usage on household energy cost. However, family size and average education negatively moderate the effect of solar energy usage on household energy cost. Therefore, the study suggested that government should encourage to build the future buildings especially the public buildings and housing societies by installing the solar panels at their roofs to cut the energy cost and to deal the environmental issue.