The Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory (LBNL) has recently published a study that looks at the price differences in the solar panel industry in Germany and the U.S. By looking at pre-incentivized prices paid for customer-owned systems (third-party-owned systems were not included in the study), they were able to pinpoint the major differences between the two countries.

In the last five years, German solar panel prices have dropped by more than 50%. Some places in the U.S. are almost on par with German prices, but on average the study found a pretty significant gap:

The study found that the soft-costs (i.e. permitting, licensing, connecting to the grid and other business processes) of solar panel installations, which account for everything except the hardware (i.e. solar modules, inverters), were much higher in the U.S. compared to Germany. In fact, average German soft-costs were at $0.62 per watt in 2011 – $2.7 per watt lower than soft costs reported by installers in the U.S. Another way of looking at it is that German soft-costs are 20% of the prices in the U.S.

via Why Solar Panels are Cheaper in Germany.