That's because the cost of inverters and other hardware account for more of the system's costs over a shorter period. The system costs range from $380 per kWh for those that can provide electricity for 4 hours to $895 per kWh for 30-minute systems. . NLR analyzes the total costs associated with installing photovoltaic (PV) systems for residential rooftop, commercial rooftop, and utility-scale ground-mount systems. This work has grown to include cost models for solar-plus-storage systems. NLR's PV cost benchmarking work uses a bottom-up. . To determine the cost of a solar-plus-storage system for this study, the researchers used a 100 megawatt (MW) PV system combined with a 60 MW lithium-ion battery that had 4 hours of storage (240 megawatt-hours). A 100 MW PV system is large, or utility-scale, and would be mounted on the ground. . Solar facilities can now earn through capacity payments and arbitrage—buying energy at low costs, storing it, and selling it when prices are higher. solar industry is expanding rapidly, closing the gap with wind power. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) forecasts nearly 63 GW of. .