Colorado Has Lowest Cost of Solar Installation in US

Colorado has just about the lowest costs in the country for installing photovoltaic solar systems, according to a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The annual study tracks the price for photovoltaic installations in the U.S. and has charted a steady downward path from $12 a watt in 1998 for a smaller residential system to $5.30 a watt in 2012. While that's the national average, the state-by-state breakdowns are far more dramatic. In Wisconsin, the installed cost for a system of less than 10 kilowatts was $5.90 a watt in 2012. The installed price for west Texas was $3.90 a watt, and in Colorado it was $4.10. For systems between 10 kilowatts and 100 kilowatts, Colorado had the lowest installed price in 2012 — $3.70 a watt. Wisconsin again had the highest cost, at $5.90. When it came to large, primarily utility-scale systems, Colorado again posted the lowest cost, at $3.20 a watt. Arizona had the highest installation figure, at $6.10 a watt, and California was the second-highest, $5 per watt. Driving down the cost has been a sharp decline in the price of solar panels, which dropped by $2.60 a watt between 2008 and 2012. That accounts for 80 percent of the overall price decline. A peskier part of the cost equation has been everything else — including additional equipment and workers' salaries. "The other costs have been less amenable to any overall policy, and they are lots of little things," said Galen Barbose, a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley and the report's principal author. "Still, collectively, those little things have become the largest aggregate cost." These so-called soft costs have been a prime target for the U.S. Department of Energy in reducing overall solar-energy costs. The Colorado Solar Energy Industries Association in 2012 launched the "Solar Friendly Community" campaign to encourage municipalities to streamline their permitting and inspection process for solar installations. "It is exciting to see tangible evidence that the Colorado solar industry is aggressively driving down solar installation costs," said Annie Lappé, solar policy director for Vote Solar, an advocacy group. "Colorado installers are offering some of the most aggressive pricing options in the country."