According to a report released by the American Solar Energy Industry Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Consulting, the US solar industry installed 6.1GW of solar power generation capacity in the first quarter, achieving its best performance in history. The record breaking quarterly performance is largely due to the easing of supply chain pressure and the further promotion of previously slow progress in solar projects.
Wood Mackenzie expects the size of the solar energy market to triple in the next five years: by 2028, the total installed capacity of solar energy will reach 378GW.
In fact, the local utility scale photovoltaic market in the United States has rebounded from a difficult year of 2022, with strong performance in the first quarter, with solar installed capacity reaching a record high of 3.8 GW. This quarter, more components also met the relevant local management policy requirements in the United States, allowing more solar products to reach project sites and enabling the industry to build its long-delayed projects.
Despite rising interest rates and economic downturn causing customers to hesitate, the US residential sector still installed 1.6GW of solar power generation in the first quarter of 2023, an increase of 30% compared to the first quarter of last year. In the next five years, the residential market will increase by 36GW of solar power generation, with an average annual growth rate of 6%.
In terms of the industrial and commercial market, the first quarter also set a record with 391MW installed. This segment is expected to grow by 12% in 2023. At the same time, the community solar department installed 212MW, a decrease of 13% compared to the first quarter of 2022, which is largely hindered by the ongoing challenges of power grid connection.
So far, Florida has the highest solar power generation in the first quarter of 2023, thanks to 1.46GW of utility scale solar installed capacity. Florida installed more than 70% more solar power in the first quarter than the second ranked state of California.
Partly due to the increase in these installations, the solar energy industry contributed 54% of the newly added grid power generation in the United States in the first quarter
