Which DOE National Laboratory collects cost data from PV industry stakeholders?

Three DOE national laboratories—Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories—collect cost data from PV industry stakeholders. Each stakeholder is contacted by only one lab to avoid overlap.

Will California's New PV rules affect PV-plus-storage systems?

In the longer term, analysts expect the new rules to constrain PV-only deployment in California and ultimately spur the deployment of PV-plus-storage systems, which have higher upfront costs (Wood Mackenzie and SEIA 2022b). Our interviews also indicated market and policy trends affecting system costs between Q1 2022 and Q1 2023.

How do market analysts evaluate the cost of PV systems?

Market analysts routinely monitor and report the average cost of PV systems and components, but more detail is needed to understand the impact of recent and future technology developments on cost. Consequently, benchmark systems in the utility-scale, commercial, and residential PV market sectors are evaluated each year.

What is NREL's solar-plus-storage cost benchmarking work?

This work has grown to include cost models for solar-plus-storage systems. NREL's PV cost benchmarking work uses a bottom-up approach. First, analysts create a set of steps required for system installation.

How much would a PV system cost without a 45x credit?

Without the 45X credit eligible for domestically assembled modules, inverters, and battery packs the MMP of the residential PV and PV-plus-storage system would have been $2.90/Wdc and $4.93/Wdc, respectively.

How efficient is a rooftop PV system?

We model a baseline 8-kWdc rooftop PV system using 20.8%-efficient, 1.97-m2 monofacial monocrystalline silicon modules from a Tier 1 U.S. supplier, microinverters with an inverter loading ratio (ILR) of 1.21 imported from China with the Section 301 tariff, and a 5-kW/12.5-kWh alternating-current (ac) coupled lithium-ion storage system.