Up to date Report & Knowledge Illustrate Distributed Photo voltaic Pricing & Design Traits

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We’re happy to announce the discharge of the most recent version of Berkeley Lab’s Monitoring the Solar annual report, describing tendencies for distributed photo voltaic photovoltaic (PV) programs in the US, together with the rising contingent of distributed solar-plus-storage programs. The report relies on information from roughly 3.7 million programs put in nationally by means of year-end 2023, capturing near 80% of all programs put in as much as that time and greater than 70% of additives in 2023. This 12 months’s report updates key tendencies associated to mission traits, system design, and pricing, and presents new materials counting on constructing and property information built-in into the Monitoring the Solar dataset.

The report, printed in slide-deck format, is accompanied by a story govt abstract, interactive information visualizations, and a public information file, all accessible by means of the hyperlink above. The authors will host a webinar summarizing key findings from the report on September 4^th at 10 am Pacific. Please register for the webinar right here: https://lbnl.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_w4ImuN7yRcWN1TPUvJIEng

The next are a couple of key findings from the most recent version of the report.

Residential programs proceed getting bigger, pushed by growing module effectivity. Residential system sizes have risen steadily over the previous 20 years, reaching a median of seven.4 kW in 2023. System sizes have grown almost in lock-step with PV module efficiencies, as proven within the left-hand panel of Determine 1. Increased module efficiencies permit for extra PV capability, as residential programs are sometimes space-constrained as a consequence of shading, obstructions, and blended roof orientations. As proven within the right-hand panel of Determine 1, roof-coverage ratios (the proportion of roof-space utilized by the PV modules) usually vary from 20-40% in residential functions and have risen solely barely since 2010.

Non-residential PV adopters span a various set of sectors, as small agricultural programs broaden their share. As proven in Determine 2, half of all non-residential installations in 2023 had been put in on industrial properties (together with retail, industrial, workplace, warehouse amenities), roughly one-third on agricultural properties, and 15% by tax-exempt (e.g., authorities, faculties, spiritual, and different non-profit) prospects. The share of programs put in on agricultural properties has been rising over time; most of those are comparatively small programs (<20 kW), typical of a small household farm. Amongst non-residential programs, third-party possession (TPO) charges are highest for tax-exempt website hosts, particularly authorities and faculty amenities (TPO charges of 55% and 47% in 2023), which additionally are typically comparatively giant in comparison with different non-residential programs.

Battery storage attachment charges proceed inching upwards. In 2023, 12% of all new residential PV installations and eight% of all non-residential installations included battery storage. As regular, Hawaii was in a class of its personal, with residential and non-residential storage attachment charges of 95% and 88%, respectively. Residential attachment charges in California rose to 14% for the 12 months. Most of these programs had been put in beneath the state’s legacy internet metering construction, however attachment charges for programs put in beneath the brand new internet billing tariffs, which strongly incentivize pairing PV with storage, reached roughly 60% by year-end. (Berkeley Lab beforehand printed a extra in-depth evaluation of adjustments within the California photo voltaic market beneath the brand new internet billing construction.) Residential attachment charges in most different states ranged from 4–10% in 2023. Non-residential attachment charges additionally differ broadly throughout states, however are usually fairly low (<2%) in states with out focused incentives.

PV system costs fell year-over-year for residential programs, however rose for non-residential programs. From 2022 to 2023, median put in costs for residential programs fell by roughly $0.1/W in actual (inflation-adjusted) phrases, the identical fee of decline as over the previous decade. In distinction, median costs for non-residential programs rose for the primary time in 15 years, by $0.1-0.2/W. These small year-over-year adjustments are delicate to fluctuations in inflation, and the lagged impact on put in costs, which might differ throughout tasks relying on the size of their improvement timeline. Throughout all three buyer segments, however particularly for residential programs, put in costs consist predominantly of enterprise course of and different “gentle prices”.

PV system costs differ broadly throughout particular person tasks. Amongst stand-alone PV programs, put in costs differ by roughly $2/W between the 20^th and 80^th percentile values for each residential and small non-residential prospects, and by roughly $1.4/W for big non-residential prospects (see Determine 4). That pricing variability displays variations in mission traits in addition to options of the native market, coverage, and regulatory atmosphere. The report features a multi-variate regression evaluation that estimates the consequences of key pricing drivers on residential put in costs in 2023. The regression evaluation reveals probably the most vital impacts related to the inclusion of battery storage (a $1.4/W improve), variations in system dimension (a $0.7/W lower from the 20^th to the 80^th percentile system dimension), and installations on residential new development ($0.7/W decrease than programs put in on current properties).

We thank the U.S. Division of Vitality Photo voltaic Vitality Applied sciences Workplace for his or her assist of this work, in addition to the quite a few people and organizations who generously supplied information for this ongoing effort.

Courtesy of Galen Barbose, Naïm Darghouth, Eric O’Shaughnessy, and Sydney Forrester, Berkeley Lab.