tracking the sun

Figure 2. Quarterly Median National Installed Prices over 2021-2022. These prices represent the up-front price paid by the customer, prior to receipt of any incentives, and can include loan-financing fees bundled into the prices charged by installers. For the purposes of this report, “large non-residential” systems are larger than 100 kW, capped at 5 MW-AC if ground-mounted.

Updated Report & Data Illustrate Distributed Solar Pricing & Design Trends

We are pleased to announce the release of the latest edition of Berkeley Lab’s Tracking the Sun annual report, describing pricing and design trends for grid-connected, distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) and PV-plus-storage systems in the United States. The report is based on data from roughly 3.2 million systems installed nationally … [continued]

Cheaper Australian Rooftop Solar PV

This post originally published on RenewEconomy One of the most comprehensive reports on the decline in solar PV prices has just been released by the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Its Tracking the Sun report details the history of solar PV prices from 1998 to 2012, and one of its more … [continued]

NREL Teams with Berkeley Lab to Analyze Solar Pricing Trends and Benchmark “Soft” Costs for…

Downward pricing for solar projected to continue; soft costs made up 40-50 percent of residential and commercial PV prices in 2010 The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE)’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) jointly released two reports examining solar photovoltaic (PV) pricing in the U.S. … [continued]

AEI Economist Fumbles Big Time on Cost of Renewables

Did you know that the landing on the moon was staged? Or that swallowing seeds will cause fruit to grow in your stomach? Or that the cost of solar power has gone up 63% since 2001?

If you are tied to reality, you’d know that all three of these statements are utterly false. And while most people know that the moon landing was real and that seeds don’t grow in your stomach, the last falsity is an easy one to slip by people who don’t follow energy — which is almost everyone.

In fact, the installed cost of solar has come down nearly 40% since 2001. […]