Warning: This is not your standard data presentation. You won’t find any spreadsheets here.
What you will find is some of the coolest visual representations of solar data to date. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)’s Open PV project is an incredible resource and visually astounding tool to boot.
And where does it source it’s information from? People like you. Help Open PV gather critical data by adding your own info.
Check out some of these screenshots:
Open PV is a free database of real American solar project info sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy. It has data on over 160,000 solar systems across the country – where they are, how big they are, how much they cost, and more. It’s all illustrated in a snazzy Visualization Gallery with handy charts and graphs. From projects in your zip code to an overview of national market trends, Open PV holds the answer to so many solar questions.
Do you have a solar system or access to data on solar systems in your area? Add your own info and help NREL build this free national solar information center.
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This would be great data if it was correct, however, it seems highly unlikely that the average solar installation price is $6.44/watt when almost all systems that I see installed residentially are less than $5/watt and commercial and utility are considerably less.
If they get this fundmental metric so wrong, how reliable is their data?
of course there is the mitigating factor of leased system prices which are now maxed out by the IRS for ITC purposes at $7/watt, however this would still not explain how the significantly lower price of monster sized commercial and utility installations would not dramatically bring down the average price/watt.
It’s all public voluntarily-provided data so NREL doesn’t claim that’s it’s comprehensive. And cost data is often the hardest thing to get people to provide. So it’s possible that the projects that did provide cost data are not representative of current average market costs. All of which means… people need to submit more data! Open PV provides the super powerful platform for free, and the more people use it, the better a resource it will become!
We must get solar energy for our survival and
And make it affordable to everybody.