ghostpress / ee509-project

Code repository for EE509 final project on modeling rooftop solar adoption in MA.

Bayesian Models of Residential Rooftop Solar Adoption in MA

Code written for CAS EE 509: Environmental Statistics, Boston University spring 2022.

Background

This analysis attempts to determine the factors that most affect residential rooftop solar adoption in municipalities of Massachusetts. Factors include: 2020 voting pattern, income, education level, and time.

Data

• Existing PV installations in MA, provided by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, which includes all solar PV systems fully registered in the Production Tracking System (PTS), current as of May 2021: “PV in PTS Public Records Request.” Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, May 2021. https://www.masscec.com/public-records-requests.

• Boundaries of MA by town and zipcode, provided by MassGIS. From these, I extracted the zipcodes included in the study locations: MassGIS (Bureau of Geographic Information), Commonwealth of Massachusetts EOTSS, accessed 12/09/2021.

• Household income data by MA block group (2015-2019), provided by NHGIS: Steven Manson, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, Tracy Kugler, and Steven Ruggles. IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 16.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. 2021. http://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V16.0.

• Education in MA by block group, provided by NHGIS: Steven Manson, Jonathan Schroeder, David Van Riper, Tracy Kugler, and Steven Ruggles. IPUMS National Historical Geographic Information System: Version 16.0 [dataset]. Minneapolis, MN: IPUMS. 2021. http://doi.org/10.18128/D050.V16.0.

• Town voting data: William Smith. Map: See How Your Town or City Voted in the 2020 Election. November 3, 2020. WBUR. https://www.wbur.org/news/2020/11/03/2020-massachusetts-election-map.

Other Sources

• “Massachusetts: State Profile and Energy Estimates.” US Energy Information Administration (EIA), US EIA, https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=MA.

• Pew Research Center, April, 2015, “A Deep Dive Into Party Affiliation.”

• U.S. Census Bureau, A Compass for Understanding and Using American Community Survey Data: What Researchers Need to Know U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 2009.

• Vilallonga, Lucia. “Policy Analysis of Rooftop Solar Incentives in MA.” GitHub, 31 Jan. 2022, https://github.com/ghostpress/ma-solar.

Use Instructions

To replicate this project on your local machie with anaconda, enter the following command in a terminal window:

conda create --name myenv --file requirements.txt

Where myenv is the name of your local environment. Then clone this repository to edit and run the code.