Can Installation Innovations Keep Cutting Solar Soft Costs?
Solar soft costs are the largest slice of system installations – can these industry installation innovations keep driving down the cost of new projects?
Solar soft costs are the largest slice of system installations – can these industry installation innovations keep driving down the cost of new projects?
Clean Power Research — a solar research, consultation, and software development firm — recently won the Innovative Solar Partner of the Year Award for its work cooperating with utilities to bring distributed solar interconnection processes online via proprietary software. By bringing said processes online, some of the “soft costs” associated … [continued]
Kickstarter, move over. The US Department of Energy has just announced a new competition, complete with cash prizes, to help launch cutting edge solar companies that offer solutions to the challenges of today’s solar marketplace. Called SunShot Catalyst, the competitive program will culminate in award packages of up to $100,000 … [continued]
By Maud Texier. Hardware costs for solar have substantially dropped over the past years. Solar module prices have decreased by 70% from 2010 to 2012. The attention is now directed towards soft costs and financing. An NREL study published in September 2013 analyzed the increasing share of soft cost in … [continued]
Two reports published by the US Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) show that soft costs — such as financing and other non-hardware costs — now make up the largest section of solar installation costs, coming in at 64% of the total price for residential solar energy systems. The … [continued]
Originally published on RMI Outlet. By Koben Calhoun & Jesse Morris RMI’s new report with Georgia Tech details U.S. installation cost reduction opportunities Download the full report, Reducing Solar PV Soft Costs: A Focus on Installation Labor. A recent Deutsche Bank report projects global newly installed photovoltaic (PV) capacity will reach 50 GW … [continued]
The US Department of Energy (DOE) and many others have identified the “soft costs” of solar as the biggest cost barriers that need to be knocked down in order to unleash a true solar revolution in the US. As I’ve noted previously, the soft costs of solar are enormously larger … [continued]
The last time we checked, solar cell hardware accounted for only half the cost of a typical solar installation. Well, that’s nothing. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has come out with two new studies demonstrating that non-hardware “soft costs” now account for a whopping 64% of the total. The … [continued]
Originally published on the Rocky Mountain Institute website By Dan Seif and Jesse Morris Why does Germany, a country with the same amount of sun on a yearly basis as Alaska, have residential solar costs half that of the U.S.? Why have solar panel prices dropped significantly while whole-system cost … [continued]
Originally published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory The Energy Department’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) recently issued a new report,“Non-Hardware (‘Soft’) Cost-Reduction Roadmap for Residential and Small Commercial Solar Photovoltaics, 2013–2020”(PDF) funded by DOE’s SunShot Initiative and written by NREL and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). The report builds off … [continued]