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Solar photovoltaic module price

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Energy

What you should know about this indicator

IRENA presents solar PV module price series for a number of different module technologies. Here we use the series for thin film a-Si/u-Si or Global Index (from Q4 2013).

Source
International Renewable Energy Agency (2023); Nemet (2009); Farmer and Lafond (2016) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Last updated
May 8, 2024
Next expected update
May 2025
Date range
1975–2022
Unit
constant 2022 US$ per Watt

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Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

Retrieved on
December 12, 2023
Retrieved from
https://www.irena.org/Publications/2023/Aug/Renewable-Power-Generation-Costs-in-2022
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
IRENA (2023), Renewable power generation costs in 2022, International Renewable Energy Agency, Abu Dhabi.
Retrieved on
December 12, 2023
Retrieved from
https://pcdb.santafe.edu/graph.php?curve=158
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
Interim monitoring of cost dynamics for publicly supported energy technologies, Energy Policy 37(3): 825-835, by Nemet, G. F. (2009), obtained via the Performance Curve Database.
Retrieved on
December 12, 2023
Retrieved from
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733315001699
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
How predictable is technological progress? J. D. Farmer & F. Lafond, Research Policy Volume 45, Issue 3, April 2016, Pages 647-665.
The data are mostly taken from the Santa-Fe Performance Curve DataBase. The database has been constructed from personal communications and from Colpier and Cornland (2002), Goldemberg et al. (2004), Lieberman (1984), Lipman and Sperling (1999), Zhao (1999), McDonald and Schrattenholzer (2001), Neij et al. (2003), Moore (2006), Nemet (2006), Schilling and Esmundo (2009). The data on photovoltaic prices has been collected from public releases of Strategies Unlimited, Navigant and SPV Market Research. The data on nuclear energy is from Koomey and Hultman (2007) and Cooper (2009). The DNA sequencing data is from Wetterstrand (2015) (cost per human-size genome), and for each year the last available month (September for 2001-2002 and October afterwards) was taken and corrected for inflation using the US GDP deflator.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

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Notes on our processing step for this indicator
  • Photovoltaic cost and capacity data between 1975 and 2003 has been taken from Nemet (2009). Prices from Nemet (2009) have been converted to 2022 US$ using: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
  • Photovoltaic cost data between 2004 and 2009 has been taken from Farmer & Lafond (2016). Prices from Farmer & Lafond (2016) have been converted to 2022 US$ using: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/
  • Photovoltaic capacity data between 2004 and 2022 has been taken from IRENA.
  • Photovoltaic cost data between 2010 and 2022 has been taken from IRENA.

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Solar photovoltaic module price”, part of the following publication: Hannah Ritchie, Pablo Rosado and Max Roser (2023) - “Energy”. Data adapted from International Renewable Energy Agency, Nemet, Farmer and Lafond. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices [online resource]
How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

International Renewable Energy Agency (2023); Nemet (2009); Farmer and Lafond (2016) – with major processing by Our World in Data

Full citation

International Renewable Energy Agency (2023); Nemet (2009); Farmer and Lafond (2016) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Solar photovoltaic module price” [dataset]. International Renewable Energy Agency, “Renewable Power Generation Costs”; Nemet, “Interim monitoring of cost dynamics for publicly supported energy technologies”; Farmer and Lafond, “How predictable is technological progress?” [original data]. Retrieved July 26, 2024 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices