What is the ceiling for solar energy in the US?

The North American country installed 14.6GW in 2016, twice as much solar energy as the year before.

The US is emerging as one of the countries that is investing the most in renewable energy, especially solar energy. In the absence of any decisions that the new administration may make, the truth is that renewable energy, especially solar energy, continues to achieve record figures year after year.

If in 2015 we knew that the North American country had promoted 7,493 megawatts of solar installation, 2016 closed with an even more impressive figure.

And, as GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) report in their “U.S. Solar Market Insight, during 2016 the world’s largest economy installed 14,625 megawatts of solar photovoltaic energy. It did so in more than 370,000 individual installations. This represents a 95% increase over the previous year’s record.

A solar revolution in American homes

Thus, the U.S. solar market reached 42.4 gigawatts installed last year. Enough to supply 8.3 million homes.

Furthermore, from a employment perspective, this has meant that, according to 2016 figures, 265,000 people are employed in this market. As recently explained by Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA.

This extraordinary year for solar energy has made the US home to more than 1.3 million photovoltaic solar energy installations.

These data help to understand how the US market has been undergoing a revolution in recent years. A market that a decade ago based its energy production on a more traditional generation.

Therefore, today we are going to take a look at this journey, since 2000, to analyze the data that this study offers us. And trying to discover what the direction will be of a sector that has experienced 16 consecutive years of growth.

How has the US market grown?

In the early years of the so-called “solar revolution”, US legislation was by no means favourable to the emergence of this type of installation. This is demonstrated by the fact that while European and Asian countries, in particular, were leading this change in electricity generation, the United States remained stagnant with more than modest figures. Let us remember that these were the years when renewable energy companies such as Spain, France, Italy, South Korea, and Germany, among others, burst onto the market. This situation, which continued until 2010, was the common denominator of a type of electricity generation that the United States seemed to resist.

But, as if it were a Bob Dylan song, the winds began to blow in another direction. It was a year after the Obama administration came to power that a significant boost was given to a new renewable energy policy that states like California were beginning to pioneer. In just six years, the US went from being a country with minimal weight in terms of solar generation to positioning itself, by 2015, as one of the countries with the greatest installed solar capacity in the world, surpassing the pioneers who paved the way. It took just over five years for the US to overtake markets such as Spain and France, leaving it just behind Italy.

These facilities, for the most part, had a clear client: the so-called “utilities”, which, far above residential destinations, have been the main interested parties in this push, which has allowed, among other things, to achieve a diversification in the type of energy consumed on American soil.

What weight does solar energy have in new generation facilities in the US?

The US market has traditionally been associated with energy generation through hydrocarbons and nuclear, where it has accumulated more than 100 plants. While this view was correct until the 2000s, trends show that the present, and the future, of new energy plants in the U.S. depend on three major traveling companions: wind, solar, and natural gas.

While in 2010, almost a third of new installations were coal plants, only 4% of new electricity generation was solar. The “U.S. Solar Market Insight” shows how this trend has changed in just seven years. The following graph shows how solar energy has multiplied in importance, going from 4% in 2010 to 39% in 2016. Today, solar energy is the main investment in the United States in new electricity generation. So much so that coal is no longer an option, while other types of renewables, such as wind power, have remained an important energy investment.

These data demonstrate the enormous potential that the US market represents for all companies specialized in the installation of renewable energy, especially for wind and solar power. Something that explains why some companies have multiplied their presence in the Americas. But how long will this trend continue? We see it below.

What is the ceiling for solar energy growth?

While the trend so far has been positive, will solar energy continue to grow in the U.S. market? Once again, the “U.S. Solar Market Insight” gives us the answer: a resounding yes. The report gives us a vision of the future, six years in which solar energy will continue to grow, although not doubling the data from the previous year, at a constant pace.

Thus, by 2022, installed solar power is expected to have tripled, leaving the barrier of 100 gigawatts installed as a mere anecdote, and chaining seven consecutive years in which 12 gigawatts would have been installed per year in the worst case scenario. cases, and 18 at best.

Although the utilities market will not demand 10 gigawatts of installation again until 2021, the residential market seems destined to grow sustainably, year after year. This represents an opportunity for small specialists, as it opens up an alternative to large installations.

With this, the U.S. market becomes an essential piece for all leaders in the sector, who will find a constant source of investment in one of the most influential economies in the world. Now it only remains to be seen if the forecasts will live up to reality.

Source: U.S. Solar Market Insight