According to GTM Research’s latest report, the U.S. PV Price Brief H2 2016, pricing for fixed-tilt ground-mount PV systems fell 17% in the past 6 months. Prices for residential PV systems fell 8.6% in the same time period.
The report breaks down U.S. residential, commercial and ground-mount PV pricing across 11 distinct hard and soft cost categories. Furthermore, it identifies areas for cost reductions and details pricing across five U.S. regions.
Rapid module price declines have drastically lowered systems prices in the second half on 2016. Due to a global supply and demand imbalance, module pricing has fallen by 33.8% since the first half of 2016, pushing down systems pricing for all market segments. As modules make up a greater portion of utility system price than residential or commercial, changes in the module market disproportionally impact overall utility systems pricing. As such, the price drops in the utility market are the greatest – 17.4% for fixed-tilt and 14.9% for single-axis tracking. Aggressive market entrants in the inverter and racking markets are also contributing to the price decreases.
This report utilizes a bottom-up modeling methodology to capture, track and report national average PV system pricing for the major market segments, based on tracked wholesale pricing of major solar components and data collected from interviews with industry stakeholders. Stakeholders interviewed include national, regional and local residential installers, commercial EPCs, commercial developers, utility PV EPCs, utility PV developers, electrical contractors, The National Renewable Energy Laboratory and hardware manufacturers throughout the solar value chain.
News item from GTM Research