PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative Program and Methodology

The US Department of Energy's PV Fleet Performance Data Initiative has been launched in order to collect and evaluate production data across multiple PV fleet partners. Performance statistics are anonymized, aggregated and shared to represent a snapshot of the US commercial and utility-scale fleet. Production data have been collected from over 1500 systems representing more than 1.3 GWdc capacity. Because this project is still adding system data and updating methodology, degradation trends and statistics will be detailed in future publications. Preliminary analysis to date indicates median performance loss rates are in line with previous publications of system degradation, on the order of −0.6%/yr to −0.9%/yr. These values are higher than module-only degradation rates which are often used in proforma estimates of project performance and economics, potentially exposing owner/operators to increased risk if systems under-perform over time.