Solar and battery can reduce energy costs and provide affordable outage backup for US households

Distributed energy resources are promising solutions for household energy affordability and resilience as weather extremes and ageing infrastructure intensify grid-reliability risks. Here we present a comprehensive nationwide assessment of over 500,000 US households, evaluating economic and back-up viability of solar–battery systems. We find that 60% of households could reduce electricity costs with average savings of 15%, whereas 63% of households could achieve affordable back-up power during power outages covering an average of 51% of their essential energy needs. However, these benefits show limited alignment with areas of greatest need, particularly in regions facing high outage risks. We also identify notable disparities in access to solar and battery, with less-populated and disadvantaged communities showing consistently lower viability. These findings demonstrate the need for targeted policy interventions to ensure equitable access to solar–battery benefits, especially as states transition from net energy metering to other electricity tariff policies.