Tracking the Sun V. An Historical Summary of the Installed Price of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2011

As the deployment of grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) systems has increased, so too has the  desire to track the installed price of these systems over time and by location, customer type, and  system characteristics. This report helps to fill this need by summarizing trends in the installed  price of grid-connected PV systems in the United States from 1998 through 2011, with preliminary  data for 2012. The analysis is based on project-level data for more than 150,000 individual residential, commercial, and utility-scale PV systems, totaling more than 3,000 megawatts (MW) and representing 76% of all grid-connected PV capacity installed in the United States through 2011.