Solar PV is getting a lot cheaper
Surprisingly Australia is very efficient at installing it
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In 2013, the United States installed more solar photovoltaic capacity than either Germany or Australia for the first time ever. (The US has tripled their combined population, so arguably this should have happened long ago…).
With the decline of feed-in tariffs and other incentives in Germany, it is likely that the US will continue to outpace that country in new PV installations.
However, the US continues to lag behind global PV leaders Germany and Australia in another important category: prices for residential systems installations. As of Q2 2013, the average installed residential system price was $4.93/W compared to Germany’s $2.21/W and Australia’s $2.56/W. That needs to change.*
Whether you look at US DOE SunShot targets or RMI’s own Reinventing Fire vision, which has the US solar market scaling from 4.5 GW PV installed per year to 20 GW, system costs have to come down to accelerate residential and commercial customer adoption.
A new analysis and report from Rocky Mountain Institute and Georgia Tech Research Institute – Lessons from Australia: Reducing Solar PV Costs Through Installation labour Efficiency – identifies opportunities for the US solar market to take important steps in that direction.
Non-hardware costs (permitting/inspection/interconnection (PII), customer acquisition, installation, and margins/overhead) now dominate system prices in the US. For sub-10-kW systems, 80 per cent of solar system cost decline in the US since 2008 has been due to hardware price reductions. In the US, non-hardware costs now account for 70 per cent of system costs. Setting aside margins/overhead, the US spends $1.22/W on PII, customer acquisition, and system installation. PV leaders Germany and Australia, on the other hand, spend just $0.33/W and $0.65/W, respectively. The US clearly can and should pursue significant cost reduction opportunities to eliminate this difference.
