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NOTICEThis report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. Neither the United States government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or any agency thereof. Executive SummaryFor more than 30 years, there have been strong efforts to accelerate the deployment of solarelectric systems by developing photovoltaic (PV) products that are fully integrated with building materials. Despite these efforts and high stakeholder interest in building-integrated PV (BIPV), the deployment of PV systems that are partially or fully integrated with building materials is low compared with rack-mounted PV systems, accounting for about 1% of the installed capacity of distributed PV systems worldwide by the end of 2009. In this report, we examine the cost drivers and performance considerations related to BIPV for residential rooftops. We also briefly review the history of BIPV product development and examine market dynamics that have affected commercialization and deployment.As with many renewable energy technologies, system prices-in terms of dollars per installed watt of direct-current peak power capacity ($/W p DC )-have a significant effect on PV deployment. In general, the installed prices of BIPV systems are higher than PV system prices, but the cause of these price premiums-higher costs, higher margins, or other considerationsand the potential for price reductions remain uncertain. Using a bottom-up analysis of components and installation labor costs, we explore the cost trade-offs that affect the prices of residential rooftop BIPV systems. We compare the prices of three hypothetical BIPV systems with the price of a rack-mounted crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV system, the "PV Reference Case," which is the most commonly installed residential system technology. One of the BIPV cases is a derivative of the c-Si PV case ("BIPV Derivative Case"), and the other two BIPV cases are based on an analysis of thin-film technologies (Table ES-1). In today's solar market, few BIPV products are fully integrated with building materials as envisioned in these BIPV cases; therefore, the cases should be seen as near-term possibilities. In contrast, the PV Reference Case represents a 2010 benchmark system price from an NREL study that uses the same methodology to assess objective system prices (Goodrich et al. 2011). Comparing the hypothetic...

Executive SummaryThis report presents results from the first U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored, bottomup data-collection and analysis of non-hardware balance-of-system costs-often referred to as "business process" or "soft" costs-for residential and commercial photovoltaic (PV) systems. Annual expenditure and labor-hour-productivity data are analyzed to benchmark 2010 soft costs related to the DOE priority areas of (1) customer acquisition; (2) permitting, inspection, and interconnection; (3) installation labor; and (4) installer labor for arranging third-party financing. Annual expenditure and labor-hour data were collected from 87 PV installers. After eliminating outliers, the survey sample consists of 75 installers, representing approximately 13% of all residential PV installations and 4% of all commercial installations added in 2010.Including assumed permitting fees, in 2010 the average soft costs benchmarked in this analysis total $1.50/W for residential systems (ranging from $0.66/W to $1.66/W between the 20 th and 80 th percentiles). For commercial systems, the median 2010 benchmarked soft costs (including assumed permitting fees) are $0.99/W for systems smaller than 250 kW (ranging from $0.51/W to $1.45/W between the 20 th and 80 th percentiles) and $0.25/W for systems larger than 250 kW (ranging from $0.17/W to $0.78/W between the 20 th and 80 th percentiles). Additional soft costs not benchmarked in the present analysis (e.g., installer profit, overhead, financing, and contracting) are significant and would add to these figures. The survey results provide a benchmark for measuring-and helping to accelerate-progress over the next decade toward achieving the DOE SunShot Initiative's soft-cost-reduction targets.We conclude that the selected non-hardware business processes add considerable cost to U.S. PV systems, constituting 23% of residential PV system price, 17% of small commercial system price, and 5% of large commercial system price (in 2010). These processes present significant opportunities for further cost reductions and labor-productivity gains.