WASHINGTON — The D.C.-based Solar Energy Industries Association said the U.S. solar market shattered all previous quarterly records for solar photovoltaic installation in the third quarter.
The association said 4.14 gigawatts of solar PV was installed across the country last quarter, at a rate of one megawatt every 32 minutes.
“Four gigawatts is absolutely huge. It is the largest quarter we’ve ever had in the U.S. solar industry, and that brings us to have the ability to power more than six-and-a-half million homes,” Tom Kimbis, SEIA’s interim president, told WTOP.
The association said solar installation in the current quarter will surpass the third quarter’s record.
Costs are driving the acceleration in solar adoption across the U.S.
“The prices since 2010 have dropped 70 percent,” Kimbis said. “I would like to think it is all because people just want the independence of going solar, but really it has just become a much more affordable technology.”
Utility companies are leading solar installation growth.
GTM Research said the utility-scale segment represented 77 percent of solar PV installed last quarter, and it expects a massive 4.8 gigawatts of utility PV projects will come online in the current quarter.
If that forecast is correct, it would be more than what was installed across the entire utility PV segment in all of 2015.
In this first three quarters of this year. solar accounted for 39 percent of all new electric generating capacity brought online in the U.S., ranking second only to natural gas as the largest source of new capacity additions.
For all of 2016, GTM Research forecasts 14.1 gigawatts of new PV installations will come online, up 88 percent from last year, with utilities accounting for 70 percent of that new capacity.
