Continuing my review in Part 5 on Foluem Green Energy (for more info on the project visit https://www.foleum.io)
The U.S. Department of Energy SunShot Initiative has a stated goal of lowering residential solar PV system installations to $1.50/Watt. Cheap PV panels from China have driven down the hardware costs to the point where the price of a total PV system is now dominated by “soft costs” – namely, customer acquisition, installation, supply chain, permit, etc. Still, total installed system costs continue to fall.
While those cost cuts are impressive, the major driver in the cost of energy produced is the amount of solar radiation that strikes the solar panels. Obviously, some locations are sunnier than others so a solar array in Arizona will produce more energy than one in Washington state, making the system more economic for the homeowner.
The data on the residential solar costs were pulled together from an ongoing large-scale campus-wide research project at the Energy Institute at The University of Texas at Austin. The main assumptions behind the data are a total cost of $3.50/Watt for the solar PV installation for a fixed array pointing south with a tilt of 25 degrees. Solar production data are based on a 2013 National Renewable Energy Laboratory study.
