Tracking the Sun 2021 Edition: Pricing and Design Trends for Distributed Photovoltaic Systems in the United States

September 22, 2021

This webinar summarizes key findings from the latest edition of Berkeley Lab’s “Tracking the Sun” annual report, describing pricing and design trends for grid-connected, distributed solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States. The report provides an overview of both long-term and more-recent pricing trends, highlighting the widespread variability in system pricing and exploring underlying drivers for that variability. The report also describes trends in distributed PV system design and other project characteristics, including trends in system size, module efficiency, the use of module-level power electronics, inverter loading ratios, mounting-type, system orientation, solar-plus-storage, third-party ownership, and customer segmentation.

The full report, along with an accompanying narrative summary briefing, interactive data visualizations, public dataset, and summary data tables, can be downloaded at: trackingthesun.lbl.gov. We appreciate the funding support of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office.