(January 19, 2016) The
price of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems installed on homes and small
businesses spans a wide range, and researchers from the U.S. Department of
Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have published a
new study that reveals the key market and system drivers for low-priced PV
systems.
Berkeley Lab’s Ryan Wiser, a co-author of the study,
explains, “Despite impressive recent cost reductions, installed prices for
small-scale PV systems in the United States continue to show wide pricing
differences depending on the location of the installation, the installer, the
components of the system, and other factors. Our work seeks to pinpoint the
characteristics of recently-installed PV systems at the lower end of the observed
solar price range.”
According to Greg Nemet of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison and the lead author of the report, “We find that low-priced
PV systems, those cheaper than 90 percent of other systems nationally, are more
prevalent in local markets with fewer active installers, and are more likely to
be installed by companies that have more county-level experience installing PV
systems. Not surprisingly, low-priced PV systems are also associated with a
variety of system characteristics. For example, such systems are more likely to
be customer owned (vs. leased), be larger in size, and use lower-efficiency
modules; and are less likely to use tracking, building-integrated PV modules,
micro-inverters, and batteries.”