02.10.2013: The US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has released a new report that examines progress made on reducing PV non-hardware – or soft – costs and provides a roadmap for reducing these costs further. »Non-Hardware (Soft) Cost-Reduction Roadmap for Residential and Small Commercial Solar Photovoltaics 2013-2020« was funded by DOE’s SunShot Initiative and was written by NREL and Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI). The report builds off NREL’s ongoing soft-cost benchmarking analysis and charts a path to achieve SunShot soft-cost targets of $0.65 per W for residential systems and $0.44 per W for commercial systems by 2020. Non-hardware costs – also referred to as soft, balance of system or business process costs – include permitting, inspection, interconnection, overhead, installation labor, customer acquisition and financing. »Soft costs are the majority of costs for residential solar and a large minority for commercial PV projects. They have remained stubbornly high in recent years despite impressive hardware-costs reductions,« said Jon Creyts, program director at Rocky Mountain Institute. »Aggressive soft-cost-reduction pathways must be developed to achieve the SunShot Initiative’s PV price targets.« Soft costs account for more than 50% of total installed residential solar costs and more than 40% of commercial solar costs. The report also notes that certain soft costs, such as permitting and interconnection, may not appear significant when measured in terms of dollars-per-watt but are costly in that they pose significant market barriers that slow PV deployment. The report includes strategies to overcoming market barriers and decreasing costs across four key areas: customer acquisition; permitting, inspection and interconnection; installation labor; and financing. The report identifies residential installation labor, and permitting, inspection and interconnection as the areas facing the most near-term uncertainty regarding roadmap targets. The roadmap also leverages proven methodologies adapted from the semiconductor and silicon PV industries, and offers comprehensive findings from market analysis and interviews with solar industry soft-cost experts – including financiers, analysts, utility representatives, residential and commercial PV installers, software engineers and industry organizations – all to identify specific cost reduction opportunities. © PHOTON |
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