Tracking the Sun IV: An Historical Summary of the Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2010

The present report describes installed cost trends for grid-connected PV projects installed from 1998 through 2010 (with some limited and preliminary results presented for projects installed in the first six months of 2011). The analysis is based on project-level cost data from approximately 116,500 residential, non-residential, and utility-sector PV systems in the United States. The inclusion of utility-sector PV is a new element in this year’s report. The combined capacity of all systems in the data sample totals 1,685 MW, equal to 79% of all grid-connected PV capacity installed in the United States through 2010 and representing one of the most comprehensive sources of installed PV cost data for the U.S. Based on this dataset, the report describes historical installed cost trends over time, and by location, market segment, technology type, and component. The report also briefly compares recent PV installed costs in the United States to those in Germany and Japan, and describes trends in customer incentives for PV installations and net installed costs after receipt of such incentives. The analysis presented here focuses on descriptive trends in the underlying data, serving primarily to summarize the data in tabular and graphical form