California has seen over 60% of US solar installations in the past 15 years, with Los Angeles and San Diego leading. Over 90% of installations have been residential, with median costs falling from $8.5/watt in 2000 to $4.1/watt in 2015. While California is far ahead of other states, continued efforts by industry, government, and public may help drive costs down further and expand solar adoption nationwide.

1. POWER OF SOLAR PHOTOVOLTAICS
BY HANSA KESWANI

2. BACKGROUND
• One of the most viable sources of renewable
energy
• Photovoltaic (PV) devices are utilized to
capture solar energy and convert it to
electricity.
• As of right now, solar produces 1% of total
energy in U.S.
• Technology is showing improvement and
costs are reducing.

3. DATA AND FOCUS
 Source of data – The Open PV project by National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
 Data is an ongoing collaborative effort between government, industry and the public.
 Analysis will be performed using Excel and SQL and visualization will be done mainly on
Tableau.
 Focus has been on 4 key factors – Number and time of installations, Size, Cost per watt
and Location.
 After looking at the results of installations all around the US, the PV market in California
was chose to study further.

4. CLEANING METHODOLOGY
• Around 50 blank columns were deleted.
• The analysis was done on data from the year 2000 to 2015. Data from 2016 was not reliable
(see next slide). The data from all other years was deleted.
• The column ‘Installation Type’ was manually edited. For example, types such as Commercial
– building and Commercial – others were changed to ‘Commercial’.
• For the key attributes, less than 10% of values were NULL and hence were considered
insignificant. Fields such as ‘Annual PV production’ had around 50% NULL values and were
not taken into consideration for the purpose of analysis.

5. INITIAL FINDINGS
Outlier

6. DISTRIBUTION OF SOLAR INSTALLATIONS IN USA
(2000 – 2015)
Over the last
15 years, CA
has had
around 60%
of the total
installations
in USA

7. For further in-depth analysis, California was chosen as it
has the largest number of data points.

8. INSTALLATION TYPE DISTRIBUTION IN USA AND THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA

9. TABLEAU PUBLIC PROJECT LINK
• https://public.tableau.com/profile/hansa.keswani#!/vizho
me/finalproject_21/Story1

10. MARKET IN CALIFORNIA
 Over 60% of installations in US have been in
California in last 15 years.
 Los Angeles and San Diego have the highest number
of PV installations so far. PV installations are
rampant in Southern California.
 More than 90% of installations have been in
residential sector.
 The median rate of cost per watt is between $5-6
per watt (grid parity) for residential installations.

11. MARKET IN CALIFORNIA CONT…
 Cost per watt in the residential installations
have reduced over the years. The median cost
was $8.5/watt in 2000 and is around $4.1/watt
in 2015.
 There is a large variation in the values, specially
in the year 2015. Some residential installation
price is above $20/W.
 Size of installation has increased from an
average of 2.2 kW in 2000 to 5.9 kW in 2015.

12. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER ANALYSIS
• Overall cost per watt is reducing and number of installations are increasing due to
the advancement in technology and reduction in soft costs.
• Since California is way ahead of the other states in USA, it might suggest that the
governments’ rebate program, cost of solar panels etc is aiding the solar industry.
• The data suggests that with continued effort of the industry, the government and the
public, the solar prices will further reduce and other states can catch up to California.
• The non – residential sector such as commercial, agricultural, educational etc. needs
to be targeted.