The new year is nearly a month old, but 2016 remains in my head; what a year it was. The Chicago Cubs won the World Series, giant pandas were taken off the endangered species list for the first time in 26 years, relations with Cuba improved drastically and Nintendo, seemingly out of nowhere, introduced to the world Pokémon Go.

With the U.K. exiting the European Union; the loss of pop, movie and cultural idols across the board; and intensifying conflict in the Middle East, 2016 was a rollercoaster of emotions, culminating in a jolting election that many of us will be processing for a long time to come.

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The “cost shift” from solar system owners to other utility customers is one of the most widely propagated myths around PV. And despite this obfuscation being repeatedly disproven by many studies, it remains widely propagated by utilities and either poorly informed or outright captured politicians and regulators from Maine to Arizona.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) has recently made its contribution to the debunking of this canard, but has taken another tack. Instead of looking at whether solar is imposing a cost shift on other customers, the national lab instead looks at the overall potential rate impact of distributed solar under a variety of valuations, and compares this to other rate impacts.

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The solar sector compelled people to stand up and take notice in 2016. Following the federal tax credit extension for rooftop solar, and falling costs in the supply chain, the resource became competitive with natural gas and coal generation.

Investments in energy storage proliferated, and more states levied requirements for more renewable energy. But on the flip side, policies historically nurturing the resource have come under fire. Net metering, a billing mechanism for excess energy sent from rooftop solar arrays, and the Public Utility Regulatory Policy Act of 1978 are facing reform efforts from utilities across the nation.

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