Exploring California PV Home Premiums

Technical Report · Tue Nov 19 04:00:00 EST 2013

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1164797· OSTI ID:1164797

Hoen, Ben ^[1]; Klise, Geoffrey T. ^[1]; Graff-Zivin, Joshua ^[1]; Thayer, Mark ^[1]; Seel, Joachim ^[1]; Wiser, Ryan ^[1]

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1. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)

Although photovoltaic (PV) penetration in the United States is increasing rapidly, properly valuing homes with PV systems remains a barrier to PV deployment. Previous studies show that PV homes command sales price premiums. Still, some appraisers and other home valuers assign no value to a home’s PV system, and those who do often cannot find comparable home sales to help determine the PV premium. This has spurred the development of alternative methods of valuing PV homes, including the use of an income approach (based on the present value of PV energy produced over its useful lifetime) and the replacement cost approach (based on the present installed cost equivalent of the PV system). However, those approaches have just begun to have been validated against actual market premiums. Moreover, the drivers underlying PV home premiums are not well understood, which may deter some appraisers from assigning value to PV systems.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-05CH11231
• OSTI ID: 1164797
• Report Number(s): LBNL--6484E
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION