Photovoltaic energy storage falls back to the annual support line

Does NREL include PV-plus-storage and standalone energy storage costs?

Starting with the 2020 PV benchmark report, NREL began including PV-plus-storage and standalone energy storage costs in its annual reports.

Are PV systems costing more than last year?

Costs continue to fall for residential, commercial rooftop, and utility-scale PV systems — by 3%, 11%, and 12%, respectively, compared to last year. In a change from previous years’ reports, balance of systems costs have increased or remained flat across sectors this year.

Do residential customers finance PV systems?

For instance, many residential customers finance their PV systems, but the benchmarks exclude financing costs, which can represent around 20% of reported market prices. For further research on the complexity of PV markets and reported market prices, see Gillingham et al. (2016) and Barbose et al. (2021a).

Why do AC-coupled systems have independent PV & battery based inverters?

Because ac-coupled systems have independent PV and battery systems with separate inverters, this coupled configuration enables redundancy. For instance, if the battery-based inverter fails to operate, the PV system can operate independently, as long as the grid is up. In addition, the PV and storage can be upgraded independently of each other.

Where can I find a summary of the solar cost analysis?

systems. Section 11 presents the results of our operations and maintenance (O&M) cost analysis. Section 12 uses our capital cost and O&M cost results to calculate the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) for PV and PV-plus-storage systems. Section 13 offers a summary and conclusions.

How does a ground-mounted PV system reduce Bos cost?

However, installation of ground-mounted PV systems at utility scale helps reduce the BOS cost of these systems because of economies of scale. Note that, for all cost values given in dollars per square meter ($/m2) terms, the denominator refers to square meters of total module surface area.