%0 Report
%A Galen L Barbose
%A Naïm R Darghouth
%D 2019
%G eng
%T Tracking the Sun: Pricing and Design Trends for Distributed Photovoltaic Systems in the United States - 2019 Edition
%8 11/2019
%X <p>Berkeley Lab’s annual&nbsp;<em>Tracking the Sun</em>&nbsp;report summarizes installed prices and other trends among grid-connected, distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States. The latest edition of the report focuses on systems installed through year-end 2018, with preliminary trends for the first half of 2019. The analysis is based on project-level data from approximately 1.6 million systems, representing 81% of all distributed PV systems installed in the United States through the end of 2018.</p><p>Key findings from this year’s report include the following:</p><ul><li><span><em>Distributed PV Systems Keep Getting Bigger, More Efficient</em></span><span>.&nbsp;</span>Median system sizes in 2018 grew to 6.4 kW for residential and roughly 50 kW for non-residential systems, though the spread in system sizes is also quite wide—especially for non-residential systems, with 20% larger than 200 kW. Increasing system sizes over time partly reflect a steady growth in module efficiencies, which rose a full percentage point to a median of 18.4% among systems installed in 2018. The report also details trends among other system design and project characteristics, including panel orientation, inverter loading ratios, solar-plus-storage, use of module-level power electronics, third-party ownership, and non-residential host customer segments.</li></ul><ul><li><span><em>Installed Prices Continued to Fall through 2018 and into 2019.</em></span>&nbsp;The report focuses its analysis of installed prices specifically on host-owned distributed PV systems. Among these systems national median installed prices fell year-over-year by 5-7%, depending on the specific distributed PV customer segment. Those declines are broadly in-line with trends over the past five years. National median installed prices in 2018 were $3.7/W for residential, $3.0/W for small non-residential, and $2.4/W for large non-residential systems. Considerably lower prices are observed among many systems, however.</li></ul><ul><li><span><em>Installed Prices Vary Widely Across Projects.</em></span>&nbsp;For example, among residential system installed in 2018, prices for host-owned systems ranged from $3.1/W to $4.5/W between the 20<span>th</span>&nbsp;and 80<span>th</span>&nbsp;percentile levels, and prices for small and large non-residential systems varied across similarly wide ranges. The report explores sources of that pricing variability, including differences in system size, module- and inverter-type, mounting-type, location, installer, host customer-type, and new construction vs. retrofits. This year’s report also contains a multi-variate regression analysis to isolate the effects of individual pricing drivers, including characteristics of the local PV market related to market size, competition, and installer experience, among other factors</li></ul><p><strong><em>&nbsp;A public version of the underlying dataset is available for download&nbsp;at</em> <a title="Project Page link" href="https://emp.lbl.gov/tracking-the-sun" target="_blank">https://emp.lbl.gov/tracking-the-sun</a>.</strong></p><p><br /><br /></p>