Thread by @doctorow

Rooftop solar is (accidentally) perfectly designed to be a spreadable idea. The panels themselves have the distinctive look of well-engineered technology, and are intrinsically visible to others from the sidewalk/street.

wired.com/story/solar-pa…

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They naturally invite conversations between owners about the benefits of solar. For us, rooftop solar has been a nearly perfect experience (the only downside was that our installer was horribly overstretched and thus unpredictable in 2019).

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We lucked into the last year for tax-credits, and were able to bundle a new roof, storage battery, and EV charger together for a really big credit that made it all affordable. Now that our finances are strained and threatened, our power bills are incredibly low.

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Solar's visibility means that it's easy to track its spread - you can literally see it from space. What's more, the patterns revealed by the spread are epidemiological - it's a social contagion, spreading by person to person contact.

academic.oup.com/joeg/article/1…

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Solar spread studies also reveal the power of social distancing: "In Switzerland, there are regions that speak Italian, German, French. If solar is spreading, it stops when it hits a language border."

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As @pomeranian99 writes, if you want to encourage solar, you need to violate these social distancing measures. That is, you get more word-of-mouth spread when you talk about solar more.

eof/