How solar and storage can bring down energy prices and carbon emissions
One of the most common issues that voters mention to me is the high cost of electricity. It’s a real problem, but there is a way out of it.
The scale of the costs
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Boston area households paid 30.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity in December of 2024: 73.3% above the national average of 17.6 cents.
The Energy Information Administration’s 2024 state electricity profile ranks MA fifth in the country for average residential electricity rates, at 23.94 cents per kilowatt-hour.
We’re well well above the national average for natural gas, which is the primary source of our energy, a divergence that has only grown in the past few years.
Our energy mix
Understanding why prices are so high starts with where our energy comes from. Below is a snapshot from the EIA of all sources of energy, broken down by total consumption, electricity consumption, and type of consumption. It’s from 2023 so it does not include the energy we’re getting from Quebecois hydropower, but it gives you the broad strokes of the problem.
In Massachusetts, our energy consumption is primarily transportation, which is still gasoline-driven for the vast majority of cars, and then residential and commercial. About half of our heating is natural gas and a quarter is from oil heating. Most of our electricity is from natural gas.
All in all, we are a state that is committed to fighting climate change but still overwhelmingly dependent on fossil fuels whose price can spike due to supply constraints or, for example, a war in Iran that disrupts 20% of the global oil supply.
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How solar helps
Solar has grown meaningfully in recent years, but most of it isn’t paired with battery storage; creating a timing problem.
Panels generate the most power in the middle of the day, when demand is lower. Peak demand is in the evening, when the sun is down. Without storage, households still have to buy electricity from the grid during these peak hours, when it’s most expensive. Batteries close that gap.
California is a great example of how this can work.
The Golden State installed so much solar, so quickly, that for a while the grid had more midday power than it could use. Solar was essentially being thrown away because there was nowhere to put it.
Battery storage changed that.
On March 29th of 2026, batteries provided 12.3 gigawatts to the California grid at 7pm, about 43% of total demand at that hour. More than 90% of that storage capacity was built in the last five years.
The mechanism is simple: batteries charge during the day when solar output is high and prices are low, then discharge in the evening when demand peaks and gas plants would otherwise have to run. Gas peaker plants are among the most expensive sources of electricity on the grid, so reducing how often they run via solar brings prices down.
The shift accelerated after a 2023 policy change. California updated how it compensates rooftop solar owners creating stronger financial incentives to pair panels with a battery rather than just export excess power to the grid. Before this policy change known as NEM 3.0, only about 10% of new residential solar installations included battery storage. By 2024, that figure had jumped to about 60%.
However, it is worth noting the tradeoff. NEM 3.0 caused overall rooftop solar installations to drop sharply, as the new economics made solar-only systems much less financially attractive. Battery attachment rates went up, and total installment rates went down. There’s a real tension presented here that Massachusetts would need to think through carefully before going down a similar path. The goal should be more solar and more storage, not just one at the expense of the other.
Australia has taken this approach further. One in three households now has rooftop solar. Wholesale electricity prices across Australia’s national grid averaged 35.83 USD in the fourth quarter of 2025, a 44% reduction from the year before. Renewables including storage also exceeded 50% of Australia’s quarterly energy mix for the first time in 2025, up from 46% the year before.
The federal government has made battery adoption a policy priority. Its Cheaper Home Batteries Program offers households a roughly 30% discount on installation costs.
What this means for Massachusetts
Massachusetts isn’t California or Australia. We get less sun, and we have a different grid. But we still get have the sun shine and electrons operate the same. And our electricity rates are among the highest in the country, which makes the economics of solar-plus storage more favorable here than it is in many states.
We do have many incentive programs for solar, but more could help speed adoption more. A battery incentive program, like MassSave for storage, offering upfront discounts to reduce the barrier to installation, could speed up this process, as Australia did. Encouraging utilities to install grid-scale batteries and large solar arrays would also create the same overall effect without relying on homeowners alone.
The upfront cost of implementing this policy is a real concern and not every household is positioned to install solar, but the evidence from California and Australia suggest that solar paired with storage is one of the more effective tools for bringing electricity costs down without adding emissions.
The case for moving faster on this in Massachusetts is straightforward. We pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country. Our electricity is dependent on fossil fuels.
Solar and storage is a way to bring down costs and carbon emissions. Now we need to get it done.
