Solar power in Tennessee
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Solar power in Tennessee is capable of producing much of the state's electricity; however, the industry remains in early stages in the state. With 129 MW of
solar power Solar power, also known as solar electricity, is the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity, either directly using photovoltaics (PV) or indirectly using concentrated solar power. Solar panels use the photovoltaic effect to c ...
in 2015, Tennessee ranked 20th among states for installed solar capacity.Tennessee fact sheet
SEIA, accessed June 4, 2016 In 2012, Tennessee's largest solar installation was the 5 MW West Tennessee Solar Farm. In 2013,
Volkswagen Volkswagen (VW; )English: , . is a German automotive industry, automobile manufacturer based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. Established in 1937 by German Labour Front, The German Labour Front, it was revitalized into the global brand it ...
opened an 8 MW solar farm at its assembly plant in Chattanooga. The largest solar installations in Tennessee in 2014 were the 20 MW Selmer and 20 MW Mulberry Solar Farms in
McNairy County McNairy County is a county located in the U.S. state of Tennessee. As of the 2020 census, the population was 25,866. The county seat and largest city is Selmer. McNairy County is located along Tennessee's border with the state of Mississippi. ...
. In 2015, White Farms, a grain farm in rural Carroll County, installed a 49.725 kW solar array. A 68.5 MW(DC) (53 MW(AC)) solar farm near Millington became the state's largest solar installation in 2019.


Rooftop solar

Photovoltaic panel Photovoltaics (PV) is the conversion of light into electricity using semiconducting materials that exhibit the photovoltaic effect, a phenomenon studied in physics, photochemistry, and electrochemistry. The photovoltaic effect is commercially ...
s installed on rooftops is estimated to be capable of producing 23% of all electricity used in
Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...
, with 16,000 MW of solar panels. Federal law requires
net metering Net metering (or net energy metering, NEM) is an electricity billing mechanism that allows consumers who generate some or all of their own electricity to use that electricity anytime, instead of when it is generated. This is particularly impor ...
upon request, but Tennessee is one of only four states without established policy, meaning that it needs to be negotiated with the utility. A more practical approach is to assume net metering by each utility. Net metering is simply an accounting procedure, and the only requirement is a bi-directional electric meter. Most meters are bi-directional. It is more practical for utilities to discover net metering instead of requiring registration and reporting, just as there is no registration or reporting requirement in connecting an air conditioner, which is instead discovered by utilities. Best practices call for perpetual roll over of kilowatt credits instead of converting to a monetary value. A 2012 estimate suggests that a typical 5 kW system will pay for itself in about 14 years, and thereafter generate a net savings of $16,622 over the 25 year life of the system.Tennessee
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Climate impact

Solar power installations in Tennessee have a relatively high climate impact, because almost 25% of the state's electrical generation (as of 2021) comes from
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. A
Nashville Nashville, often known as Music City, is the capital and List of municipalities in Tennessee, most populous city in the U.S. state of Tennessee. It is the county seat, seat of Davidson County, Tennessee, Davidson County in Middle Tennessee, locat ...
-based startup, Clearloop, is targeting solar installations based on three criteria: “Where are the sunniest places? Where’s the
grid Grid, The Grid, or GRID may refer to: Space partitioning * Regular grid, a tessellation of space with translational symmetry, typically formed from parallelograms or higher-dimensional analogs ** Grid graph, a graph structure with nodes connec ...
the dirtiest? And where can a dollar invested in infrastructure go the longest way?” The company's first installation, in Jackson, has capacity to power about 200 homes. Clearloop plans to build additional installations based on investment by companies which want to transition to 100% renewable electricity or offset corporate emissions.


Statistics


See also

* Wind power in Tennessee *
Solar power in the United States Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2024, utility-scale solar power generated 218.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) in the United States. Total ...
*
Renewable energy in the United States A renewable resource (also known as a flow resource) is a natural resource which will replenish to replace the portion depleted by usage and consumption, either through natural reproduction or other recurring processes in a finite amount of t ...


References


External links


Incentives and Policies
{{Energy in the USA Energy in Tennessee
Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...