📄️ Overview
The Project Economics page allows you to add Incentives and other system costs to your project design. Select the Incentives or Economics ribbons to to add Incentives or system costs to your project.
📄️ Investment Tax Credit (ITC)
The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), has designed an investment tax credit, to encourage the deployment of solar energy in the United States. The ITC is a % tax credit for commercial and residential buildings. This allows the business or individual home owner to apply the credit to their income tax. Though the ITC is applied to the solar panels purchased, it can also be applied to solar and storage assets. However the requirement for a solar and storage system to be eligible for the ITC is not as straightforward. Since the storage is not considered a renewable source of power, to be eligible for the tax credit, the battery has to be charged from Solar at least 75% of the time. The portion of ITC the storage will receive will be proportional to the percentage of time it is charged by solar. So to get 100% of the ITC credit, it need to be charged by solar only.
📄️ Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System
Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS) is a depreciation schedule in the US. MACRS depreciation applies to storage depending on who owns the battery and how the battery is charged. The following schematic published by NREL explains which type of MACRS applies to which system:
📄️ Bonus Depreciation
Bonus depreciation, is in addition to the normal depreciation that allows businesses to reduce the cost of purchases.According to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), "bonus depreciation allows taxpayers to deduct a specified percentage (30, 50, or 100 percent) of depreciation in the year the qualifying property is placed in service". There are specific eligibility criteria that the purchased assets have to meet to be eligible for the bonus depreciation.
📄️ Production Tax Credit
Production based incentives are paid based on the actual energy produced by the system. A $/kWh is assigned for a period of time.
📄️ Economics
System fixed cost and system O&M cost are for defining costs that are not associated with particular equipment. These costs do not scale based on the size or technology in the system. If possible, enter all component costs on the Equipment tab, dedicated to the system's equipment.
📄️ Muliple Incentives
Order of multiple incentives