The growth of PV and energy storage system installation in the commercial sector is largely driven by various economic metrics of total system installation cost, which differ by region. In order to drive the expansion of commercial system deployment in the USA we need to understand the cost drivers of various balance of system components for different system configurations, including DC-coupled and AC-coupled energy storage systems. While NREL’s annual cost benchmark reports, so far, have already covered the total system installation cost of utility scale PV and energy storage, commercial roof-top PV and residential PV, this study details regional cost factors including labor costs, material & equipment costs, sales taxes etc., using a system-level bottom-up cost modeling approach for commercial ground-mounted PV and energy storage systems. The new commercial-scale cost models for the year 2020 identifies all-in PV and energy storage installed cost, by state, for ground mounted systems in the USA. Also, we assess the potential cost reduction opportunities with new balance of system technologies to aid future R&D in this area. Based on the new system cost models, our preliminary analysis indicates that the total system installation cost vary between: $1.63/Wdc (2 MW) and $2.45/Wdc (100 kW) for commercial-scale ground mounted PV systems, $507/kWh (4-hour duration) and $2,444 (0.5-hour duration) for a 600kW commercial-scale energy storage systems.
