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Comment by why_only_15 | Hacker News Reader

> As of 2021, about 2 percent of houses of worship in the United States have solar systems, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which the University of California manages for the U.S. Department of Energy. That’s disproportionately high; houses of worship make up only 0.6 percent of all non-residential buildings.

What they meant here was that 2% of solar systems in the United States are on HoW and 1.9% of HoW have solar systems (page 5 of https://live-etabiblio.pantheonsite.io/sites/default/files/h... )

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I don't see how this is significant...? So 1.9% of 0.6% of non-residential buildings have PV. Okay, so what? Warehouses, gas stations, parking lots, apartments, campuses... solar is everywhere. Why is it notable that a tiny minority of HoW also have PV? Even if they accounted for, say 3% of all non-residential PV... still, so what?

(Not directed at you, parent poster, just wondering out loud. Like I don't get why this was a study at all, much less what the results signify...)

Doesn't having those numbers available help you ask questions like "why are houses of worship more likely to install solar panels than a warehouse?" which could possibly point towards answers to the question "how can we increase the percent of warehouses that are installing solar panels?" Maybe it doesn't lead to anything (many churches are more motivated by ideals and less motivated by profit than a warehouse) but studying outlier categories even if they're minorities seems like a reasonable thing to do.

Yes, you have a point there, but I think my gripe is that the numbers are so tiny as to be potential rounding errors on an otherwise pretty self-evident hypothesis: that solar subsidies (like direct pay) increase solar installations. We've known that for decades already.

If there were something special about HoW that make them disproportionately susceptible to subsidy-driven PV, that would be an interesting finding... but I don't think you can make that determination on 1.9% of 0.6%.

Still, you have a point. If nobody studied this, we wouldn't know if that was 1.9% of 0.6% or 90% of 50%. And maybe the numbers will change in the coming years, and this gives us a great baseline starting point.

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