Modeling the U.S. Rooftop Photovoltaics Market

Global rooftop PV markets are growing rapidly, fueled by a combination of declining PV prices and several policy-based incentives. The future growth, and size, of the rooftop market is highly dependent on continued PV cost reductions, financing options, net metering policy, carbon prices and future incentives. Several PV market penetration models, sharing a similar structure and methodology, have been developed over the last decade to quantify the impacts of these factors on market growth. This study uses a geospatially rich, bottom-up, PV market penetration model--the Solar Deployment Systems (SolarDS) model developed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory--to explore key market and policy-based drivers for residential and commercial rooftop PV markets. The identified drivers include a range of options from traditional incentives, to attractive customer financing options, to net metering and carbon policy.