The latest edition of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s annual Tracking the Sun report finds that prices for distributed solar power systems continued to fall in 2018, that industry practices continue to evolve and that systems are getting bigger and more efficient.
The report describes price and technology trends for distributed solar projects nationally, collecting project-level data from approximately 1.6 million systems, representing roughly 80% of all systems installed through the end of 2018. More than 2 million distributed solar projects are currently operating in the United States.
Key findings from this year’s report include:
- Installed prices continued to fall through 2018 and into 2019. National median-installed prices fell year-over-year by 5% to 7% across the market, continuing trends seen over the past five years. Before any incentives, national median-installed prices in 2018 reached $3.70 per watt for residential, $3.00 for small non-residential, and $2.40 for large non-residential systems.
- Installed prices vary by state. Prices per watt varied widely for all sectors and regions, ranging from a low of $2.80 in Wisconsin to a high of $4.40 in Rhode Island for residential systems. The range of prices for small non-residential systems was similar, from $2.50 in Washington to $3.70 in Minnesota. State differences stem, in part, from underlying market conditions, such as market size and competition, as well as differences in permitting and interconnection processes, taxes, and incentives.
- Other drivers of prices. Other differences in price can stem from system size, module- and inverter-type, mounting-type, location, installer, host customer-type and new construction vs. retrofits. This year’s report has a new analysis to isolate the effects of individual pricing drivers, including characteristics of the local photovoltaics market related to market size, competition and installer experience, among other factors.
- Market trends. Third-party ownership of systems has declined in recent years, dropping to 38% of residential, 14% of small non-residential, and 34% of large non-residential systems in the 2018 sample. That trend reflects the emergence of residential loan products, among other factors. Tax-exempt customers, such as schools, government, and nonprofit organizations, made up a disproportionately large share (roughly 20%) of all non-residential systems.
- Distributed PV systems keep getting bigger, more efficient. Median system sizes in 2018 grew to 6.4 kW for residential and roughly 50 kW for non-residential systems, with 20% of the latter larger than 200 kW. The larger system sizes partly reflect a steady growth in module efficiencies, which rose a full percentage point to a median of 18.4% among systems installed last year. The report also covers system design trends, including panel orientation, inverter loading ratios, solar-plus-storage, use of module-level power electronics and third-party ownership.
The report, along with an accompanying slide deck, summary data tables, and a public version of the underlying dataset, is at trackingthesun.lbl.gov. The report authors will also summarize key findings from the report via webinar on November 12. Register here.
News item from Berkeley Lab
Solarman says
As you’ve pointed out, it depends on where the solar PV is installed. For instance in California it has been a practice for homeowners to stay with grid tied systems, with the tiered electricity rates and TOU rate spiking, grid tied systems have grown to 10kWp and larger for homes. Now the “self consumption” movement has arrived where solar PV and energy storage is part of the system. With smart ESS becoming more prevalent in the market place, home owners are opting to send less power to the utility and use more excess generation at night using their own energy storage systems. In the large IOU areas of California serviced by SCE, PG&E and SDG&E folks are installing large solar PV systems and are still paying off the system in 5 to 7 years. Somewhere along the line, California made its grid “look” like the island grid of Hawaii in cost, this has been the driving factor to spend more on solar PV and even energy storage. Entities like SCE is “reorganizing” its tiered rates. I believe now it is 17 cents/kWh for the lowest energy use tier, to 25 cents/kWh for tier two and 31 cents/kWh for tier three.