The new report was published by GTM Research this week, entitled U.S. PV System Pricing H2 2016: System Pricing, Breakdowns and Forecasts, and investigates the solar system pricing stack across market segments and the impacts that pricing drops will have.
Solar PV module prices have been dropping for some time, due primarily to a significant oversupply issue. Module prices will also continue to fall, having already fallen 33.8% since the first half of 2016, affecting overall solar system pricing, particularly in the utility-solar market, where solar modules account for a much larger slice of the bill — fixed-tilt utility-scale solar have seen prices dropped 17.4%, while single-axis tracking projects have seen their prices drop by 14.9%. The report also notes, however, that while solar module price drops have had a significant impact on utility-scale solar prices, “aggressive market entrants in the inverter and racking markets are also pushing prices down rapidly.”
The author of the report, GTM Research solar analyst Ben Gallagher, acknowledged quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year price drops for the solar industry have been the norm for some time now, but “in the past six months, these price drops have been more dramatic than anything we’ve seen since 2011 or 2012.” Further, Gallagher adds that “It’s not just the price drop for modules, but the entire balance-of-system hardware ecosystem that’s seeing tremendous price pressure.”
Further price drops have been seen across several aspects of the chain, including $0.01/Wdc from the first half of 2016 to the second half for labor costs, while residential solar prices have fallen by 8.6%
Read more at “Dramatic” Solar Price Reductions Will Only Continue to Fall
No comments:
Post a Comment