The Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) has released its Solar Photovoltaic System Cost Benchmarks publication for 2024. Last week we observed that utility-scale solar’s cost doubles if you combine it with multi-hour battery energy storage, citing examples from the UK and China. This SETO demonstrates the same thing, but for the US across the residential, utility-scale, and commercial-scale segments. Under the Modeled Market Price (MMP), the actual price today (around 10% higher than SETO’s Minimum Sustainable Price) is $1,120 per KW for utility-scale, $1,510 per kW for commercial-scale, and $3,150 per kW for residential. Those are familiar numbers, little changed for several years now – with module efficiency improvements counterbalanced by trade disruptions and other forms of…