While the US Federal government has created the most clearly delineated policy for PV performance contracts, a number of state, local, and private facilities have completed performance contracts incorporating PV as well. To better examine this trend, we now turn to the results of the PV performance contracting stakeholder survey conducted in support of this paper.

The survey gathered data for 18 performance contracts that incorporated grid-connected PV systems between 2000 and 2003. In the context of the larger energy services market, 18 projects may seem like an insignificant figure. When viewed in the context of the PV market, however, the trend is more compelling. As can be seen in Figure 1, the megawatts of PV installed in performance contracts expanded steadily over the period 2000-2003 and has represented an increasingly significant percentage of annual US grid-connected installations. In 2000, for example, only 6.75 kW of PV capacity were installed through performance contracting. This figure represented less than 1% of the PV installed that year. In 2003, 3.36 MW of PV, or 10.5% of the year’s total grid-connected capacity, was installed through performance contracts.

Figure 1: Grid-connected PV Installed through Performance Contracts as a Share of Annual PV Installations