Effects of expiration of the federal energy tax credit on the National Photovoltaics Program

Technical Report · Tue May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1984

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/6379622· OSTI ID:6379622

The federal energy tax credit is scheduled to expire at the end of 1985. This study concludes that the US photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing industry will be hurt by the expiration. Projected 1986 sales are significantly reduced as a direct result of system price increases following from expiration of the credits. The character of the industry will probably change, with greatly reduced emphasis on domestic electric utility applications. Indirect effects arising from unrealized economies of scale and reduced private investment in PV research and development (R and D) and in production facilities could have a very large cumulative adverse impact on the US PV industry. The industry is forecasting as much as a fourfold reduction in 1990 sales if tax credits expire, compared with what sales would be with the credits. Because the National Photovoltaics Program is explicitly structured as a government-industry partnership, large changes in the motivation of funding of either partner can affect program success profoundly. In particular, reduced industry participation implies that such industry tasks as industrialization and new-product development will be slowed or even halted. In addition, those PV research areas receiving heavy R and D support from private PV manufacturers, such as collector research, module reliability, and some balance-of-system development and large-system experiments, will be adversely affected due to reduced private participation and funding. Finally, the curtailment of electric utility applications will delay realization of photovoltaics as an important US bulk power option.

• Research Organization: California Institute of Technology (CalTech), Pasadena, CA (United States). Jet Propulsion Lab. (JPL)
• DOE Contract Number: AI01-76ET20356
• OSTI ID: 6379622
• Report Number(s): DOE/ET/20356-15; JPL-PUB-84-36; ON: DE85000329
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

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