The Ohio State University: College of Engineering

Installation is Cheap

Historical Trends in Median Installed Prices

Figure 1: Median Installed Price trends over Time[4]

The data reported the systems installed by year-end 2015. In total, data were collected for more than 820,000 individual PV system (85% of U.S. PV system). Over the full duration of the time series, median installed prices declined by 6% to 12% per year. Compared to other years, the installed prices drop significantly since 2009, because of the reductions of hardware costs and “soft” costs. The most important thing is the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative has the goal to reduce the price of solar energy to $1/W by the end of this decade.

 

Installation of Solar Batteries

 

 

Video 1: Powerwall [11]

Since the home solar battery is a new technology, the price is much higher than solar panel system. If you have high electricity bills, the solar battery is still a wise investment which will pay off in few years. Compared with the price of the solar battery itself, the installation price is much cheaper. Typical installation cost ranges from $800 to $2000. Here are the 2016 list prices for two leading solar battery products [10]:

  • The 13.5-kilowatt-hour (kWh) Tesla Powerwall 2.0 has a list price of $5,500, which includes a built-in inverter.
  • LG’s 9.3 kWh Chem RESU battery is typically sold for $6,000 to $7,000, not including an inverter.

 

Should I Install Solar Battery?

 

The first step you should concern is to understand how your utility charges you for your electricity. Solar battery works well in a different way for the following 3 utility charging methods [7]:

  • Time-of-use (TOU) rates: Because the peak TOU rate is double as off-peak rate, using solar battery system can reduce the cost of electricity during peak hours.

 

  • Demand charges: With the help of a solar battery, you can reduce the demand charges by minimizing the amount of electricity you buy from the grid.

 

  • Reduced or no net metering: Solar battery can store your excess solar energy instead of sending it back to the grid. In this way, you can also reduce the cost of electricity you buy from your utility.