Programs offering financial support for residential and commercial solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are using a variety of innovative approaches to ensure that these systems perform well, according to a new report released today by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Clean Energy States Alliance (CESA).
The report describes the strategies currently being used by 32 state and local PV incentive programs in the U.S. and provides recommendations to help guide program design efforts going forward.
“Ensuring that PV systems perform well is critical to maintaining the rapid growth in this market,” explains Galen Barbose of Berkeley Lab. “This report provides the most comprehensive examination to-date of the full range of options available to PV incentive programs for advancing this objective.”
The report comes on the heels of major new solar legislation recently enacted in California and a re-design of the state’s PV incentive programs, both of which take aggressive steps towards ensuring that PV systems installed in the state perform well. A key element of the new programs will be the transition to incentive structures based on actual and estimated energy production often referred to as performance-based incentives and expected performance-based incentives, respectively.
“Organizations offering financial support for PV understand that they have a critical role to play in making sure that customers and the public get what they pay for,” explains Ryan Wiser of Berkeley Lab.
Mark Bolinger explains, “It’s important to begin with a clear understanding of what specific performance issues are of greatest concern, as most strategies are best-suited to addressing particular performance issues.” The report also recommends that programs find ways to help customers become better-educated purchasers of PV systems and more skilled at assessing the performance of their systems. Additional recommendations in the report address equipment standards, warranty requirements, capacity rating conventions, the use of performance-based incentives, and other potential strategies.
One overarching challenge that the report highlights is the lack of a broad base of knowledge about the prevalence and severity of different performance issues and about the actual costs and effectiveness of different strategies for addressing those issues. As Barbose concludes, “One of the most important things that PV incentive programs can do to promote system performance is to identify key performance issues that occur and document their experiences with addressing those issues. Only with this information can the broader PV community proceed with addressing these issues effectively.”
Download “Designing PV Incentive Programs to Promote Performance: A Review of Current Practice”:
Loading...