NREL produces charts that describe and indicate the factors to consider if the United States is to reach its 'SunShot soft-cost' targets of $0.65/W for residential systems and $0.44/W for commercial systems by the year 2020.
Is this possible?
This new report from the U.S. Energy Department's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) literally draws charts that illustrate a road map to achieving DOE's SunShot Initiative’s PV price target goals by 2020. The road maps include cost reductions and innovations necessary to achieve these targets after studying four main areas--customer acquisition; permitting, inspection, and interconnection, installation labor; and financing. The report also notes that soft costs account for more than 50 percent of total installed residential solar costs and more than 40 percent of commercial solar costs.
Lets review these charts:
Table 1--Readiness Factor or Legend
Table 2--Residential PV Soft-Cost Reduction Road map
Table 3--Commercial PV Soft-Cost Reduction Road map
"This report represents the first quantitative, national road map that targets soft-cost-reduction opportunities. Its future refinements are necessary to determine the path forward to reduce the largest cost in residential solar installations. We need to be persistent in identifying the levers of change and where the big challenges persist." a statement from Minh Le, Director of DOE's Solar Energy Technologies Office (ref).
Read Full Report -- NREL