According to a new report released by the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), soft costs accounted for 63.5% of total costs of residential solar installations, 56.7% for small commercial systems ( < 250kW) and 52% for large commercial systems ( ≥ 250kW) in 2012. The report, entitled, Benchmarking Non-Hardware
Tag:
soft costs
Solar’s high price tag once limited its use to those willing or required to pay more for cleaner power — but that’s quickly changing. A dramatic drop in panel prices means we are now in a new era of solar: one in which solar technology costs are no longer the major barrier to scale.
Last week Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory released their annual Tracking the Sun report on the cost of going solar across the U.S. The research team found that solar’s price tag has never been lower, and the most significant opportunity for continued price reduction has nothing to do with panels – it’s all about non-hardware “soft” costs like local
The U.S solar industry keeps putt-putting along instead of moving full steam ahead. Why? The go-to answer is soft costs. But that doesn’t tell us much.
The term “soft costs” doesn’t even have a universally accepted definition. What does it mean? We can say for sure it doesn’t mean hardware or mounting
Just a week after Governor Cuomo announced the first round of awards under the NY-Sun Competitive PV program, the Governor is back at it announcing that $13.5 million will be made available to help reduce the overall cost of installing solar, specifically non-module costs. The combination of these announcements represents a one-two punch for
It used to be — way back in history, like 2008 — that the biggest barrier to growing solar markets was the cost of the modules. Since then, module costs have come down around 80% — to the point that hardware costs are no longer the largest part of the overall cost of a solar system.
Our latest webinar featured Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Galen Barbose sharing hot-off-the-presses findings of the 5th annual Tracking the Sun report on solar price trends in the U.S. The report confirmed that solar has never been a better deal for Americans. 2011 brought another year of double digit cost declines, and that downward
Kristen Ardani of the National Renewable Energy Labs studies soft costs in US PV markets, and she recently joined us for a webinar to present her findings, in advance of a full report (to come in a few weeks). A pdf of the presentation is here (pdf) or watch the full recording in all its glory.