SOLAR TODAY - November/December 2011

view from the states

Installed PV Costs

Compiled by Mike Koshmrl, associate editor

Spot pricing on crystalline silicon photovoltaic (PV) modules has plummeted by an astonishing 40 per- cent since the beginning of the year. Balance of system costs, including mounting hardware, labor, permitting and fees, installer profit, and so on, is declining at a rapid rate. Pricing has been more stable in inverters.

In a competitive market, lower prices quickly flow downstream. In its latest report, “Tracking the Sun IV,” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the installed price of behind-the-meter PV averaged $6.20 per watt last year, down 17 percent from $7.50 in 2009. Systems larger than 500 kilowatts (k W) dropped $2 per watt for a 26 percent decline. Residential-scale and small commercial systems (1 k W to 10 k W) fell between 90 cents and $1.10 per watt, and now average $6.80 per watt.

Installed costs vary widely state to state, based on local regulatory and market realities.

After incentives, residential PV in California and New Jersey, where the high price of grid electricity drives demand, averaged $4 per watt. Of the 20 states that submitted post-incentive cost data, only Minnesota and Wisconsin reported higher post-incentive costs. At the other end of the spectrum was Oregon, where residential PV cost just $2.20 per watt. Arkansas, with less than 1 megawatt (MW) installed, averaged less than $3 per watt.

Falling installed costs help to drive the 2 gigawatts (G W) of new installations forecast this year. Sans incentives, a small residential system could be installed in Germany last year for $4.20 per watt (the country now boasts 17 GW of installed solar capacity). As the U.S. market grows, our prices should approach that level.

*Data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s “Tracking the Sun IV: An Historical Summary of the Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2010.” View the PDF online at tinyurl.com/ Tracking TheSun.

KEY

cpw= cost per watt Yellow states: $2.00 – $2.90 post-incentive PV Orange states: $3.00 – $3.90 post-incentive PV Brown states: $4.00 – $4.90 post-incentive PV Tan states: Data not available The LBNL dataset tracked installed cost data for 42 states and approximately 116,500 PV systems, totaling 1,685 M W and representing 79 percent of all grid-connected PV capacity installed in the United States through 2010. Net-installed-cost, or post-incentive, data was captured for 20 states.