California Center for Sustainable Energy

New Berkeley Lab report on solar PV in the U.S.

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released a new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic ( PV) power systems in the U.S., showing that the average cost of these systems remained largely unchanged from 2008 to 2009, before beginning a steep decline in 2010.

"Tracking the Sun III: The Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998-2009" provides a comprehensive summary of installed cost trends for grid-connected PV systems and provides preliminary cost trends for systems installed in 2010. The report is based on project-level data from 27 PV incentive programs spanning 16 states, representing 70 percent of all grid-connected PV capacity installed in the United States through 2009.

The report finds that average installed costs declined over time, from $10.8/watt in 1998 to $7.5/watt in 2009 (in real 2009 dollars per installed watt DC). Although wholesale module prices declined precipitously from 2008 to 2009, average installed costs remained flat over this period. However, preliminary cost data for 2010 suggests that drop in module prices appears to have made its way to customers.

In the California Solar Initiative Program, average installed costs dropped by $1.00/watt between 2009 and the first ten months of 2010, and in New Jersey, costs dropped by $1.20/watt between 2009 and the first six months of 2010.

In addition to describing temporal trends, the report also describes trends in installed costs by various parameters, such as system size, components and customer type, as well as trends in financial incentive levels over time and the associated impact of those trends on the net installed cost of PV for residential and commercial PV system owners after receipt of incentives.

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