By Laila Kearney
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Solar energy accounted for 75% of electricity generating capacity added to the U.S. power grid earlier this year as panel installations hit a quarterly record, according to a published report by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association on Thursday. .
The country’s solar industry saw 11.8 gigawatts of new capacity in the first three months of 2024 as electric utilities continued to rapidly add renewable energy sources, the report said.
U.S. solar energy has benefited from greater panel availability and federal and state policies aimed at increasing the amount of clean energy on the electrical grid to meet climate-driven emissions goals.
“Not only has the global solar energy supply chain expanded, but module imports to the US have also increased significantly over the past year,” according to the report.
Supply chain bottlenecks have eased and the cost of solar panels has fallen after Biden imposed a two-year moratorium on imported panels believed to be produced with forced labor in China.
From June 2023 to March 2024, the US imported 49 GW of solar modules. Meanwhile, domestic solar panel manufacturing capacity jumped to 26.6 gigawatts in the first three months of the year from 15.6 gigawatts in the previous quarter.
Florida, followed by Texas, California and Nevada, installed the most panels, with utility-scale solar accounting for the majority of additions.
Home solar additions fell 25% year over year and
18% from the previous quarter, primarily due to rising interest rates and the slowdown in California rooftop solar. The commercial solar sector was practically stable compared to the previous quarter.
The United States is expected to install roughly the same amount of solar capacity this year as in 2023, which was a record nearly 40 Gigawatts of additions, the report said.
(Reporting by Laila Kearney; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
