NREL Report: U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System and Energy Storage Cost Benchmark:

[svetz]

https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/77324.pdf

A lot of interesting stuff in there... here's what I thought the top take aways were ...





String inverters are going away and optimizers are the fastest growing market? What??? Probably it's just mainly SolarEdge participating with the Tracking the Sun dataset more than other vendors. Makes me wonder about the validity of the other data... take it with a grain of salt! ;-)

 

[svetz]

As of December, Enphase held a 48% share of the selected markets, compared to SolarEdge’s 40%. The timing of its rise in market share coincides with the launch of its Encharge battery in North America in July.

ref
So Enphase might be making a comeback (the other data is 1Q20). Still surprising that string inverter market share isn't higher.

 

[Maast]

It makes sense that string inverters are losing market share, the ease of installation + inherent shading optimization + redundancy + NEC required panel-level rapid shutdown of microinverters is a pretty compelling argument and I believe they cost the same or slightly less for the same capacity. Its what I would do if I didnt care about storage.

The optimizers are increasing in market share probably because if the NEC mandated rapid shutdown.

If you do care about storage then a central inverter plus panel optimizers to meet the shutdown requirements costs less than microinverters AC coupled to a central inverter, albeit not by a whole lot once you throw in the cost of tier 1 solar charge controllers.