Benchmarking Non-Hardware Balance-of-System (Soft) Costs for U. S. Photovoltaic Systems, Using a Bottom-Up Approach and Installer Survey-Second Edition.

摘要

This report presents results from the second U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored, bottom-up data-collection and analysis of non-hardware balance-of-system costs--often referred to as business process or soft costs--for U.S. residential and commercial photovoltaic (PV) systems. Annual expenditure and labor-hour-productivity data are analyzed to benchmark 2012 soft costs related to (1) customer acquisition and system design and (2) permitting, inspection, and interconnection (PII). We also include an in-depth analysis of costs related to financing, overhead, and profit. The second annual survey of U.S. PV installers was deployed from September 2012 to May 2013, focusing on customer acquisition and PII costs for the study period of January 1 to June 30, 2012. We gathered data from 55 residential PV installers, representing 4,260 residential installations and approximately 27 MW of residential capacity installed during the first half of 2012. We cleaned the data for outliers, yielding sample sizes ranging by cost category from 47 to 53. We also gathered data from 22 commercial PV installers, representing 269 commercial PV installations during the 6-month study period for a total of 66 MW of capacity.