What is 'Socket' Parity and is Rooftop Solar PV There Yet Without Subsidies?

In recent years, the mar­ket for rooftop solar pho­to­voltaic (PV) tech­nol­ogy has changed sig­nif­i­cantly, largely dri­ven by gov­ern­ment and state incen­tive pro­grams, abun­dant sup­ply of low-cost sil­i­con, and sub­stan­tial drops in mod­ule prices. How­ever, if the use of rooftop solar PV is to con­tinue to grow, it is impor­tant that it become cost com­pet­i­tive with­out the use of sub­si­dies. From the customer's per­spec­tive, the term "socket" par­ity describes when the lev­elized cost of elec­tric­ity (LCOE) pro­vided by the instal­la­tion is equiv­a­lent to the retail elec­tric­ity rate pro­vided by dis­tri­b­u­tion util­ity com­pa­nies. When assess­ing the eco­nomic via­bil­ity of res­i­den­tial solar PV, exist­ing lit­er­a­ture typ­i­cally con­sid­ers few loca­tions and fails to con­sider the cost and price dif­fer­ences that exist across dif­fer­ent states. By using solar inso­la­tion data from more than 1,000 sta­tion loca­tions, instal­la­tion costs by region, and state-average util­ity rates, this paper pro­vides a more com­plete assess­ment of the eco­nomic via­bil­ity of rooftop solar PV across the coun­try as mea­sured by the projects' net present val­ues (NPV). We per­form sen­si­tiv­ity analy­ses and eval­u­ate the reduc­tions in installed costs needed to reach socket par­ity. Among the sce­nar­ios con­sid­ered, we esti­mate that only Hawaii has fully achieved socket par­ity with­out the use of subsidies.

Speaker: Dr. Paulina Jaramillo, Carnegie Mellon Univ