U.S. Solar Industry Reports Record Power Installed

This is the type of news I would like to see every year for the next ten years.  Growing the number of solar installations will do more to make us energy independent than drilling for oil in everyone's back yard.

From Talking Points Memo:


What Solyndra? Despite the unfortunate high-profile bankruptcy of the Freemont, California solar company and several other major U.S. solar firms, the third quarter was the best yet in the history of the American solar industry, at least so far as total power generation was concerned.
Over 449 kilowatts-worth of photovoltaic solar energy facilities, enough to power 600,000 homes, were installed across in the country between July and September, according to a report published Wednesday by market research company GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA).
That’s a 140 percent increase from the same quarter last year and a 39 percent increase over the second quarter of 2011. It’s also more solar power than was installed during the entirety of 2009.
“The U.S. solar industry is on a roll, with unprecedented growth in 2011,” said Rhone Resch, President and CEO of SEIA, in a press release. “Solar is now an economic force in dozens of states, creating jobs across America.”
The growth was driven by a sudden turn-around in the residential market, up 21 percent after two quarters of consecutive declines, and an even greater surge in the utility-scale solar market (that is, solar installations put up for, and by, utilities companies), up a whopping 47 percent.
23 utility installations alone accounted for 200 megawatts of photovoltaic solar during the period, a 400 percent increase form the second quarter and more than all types of solar installations in any single quarter up until the third quarter of 2010. The largest of these utility solar projects are located in Arizona, New Mexico and California.
But the underlying catalyst for more utilities turning to the sun for power was government funding. As the report’s authors come right out and admit: “Much of this growth is due to the Department of Treasury’s 1603 program, which is due to expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress extends it.”
The 1603 program was created under the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, aka the federal Stimulus Package, to provide grants to reimburse qualifying businesses for installing solar projects on their properties, paying up to 30 percent of the cost of the installations.
So far, the program has leveraged about $23 billion in private sector investment for this purpose, according to 34 Senate democrats, who on Thursday sent a letter to Senate leaders calling for an extension of the program. A day earlier, 88 Democrats in the House signed a similar letter.
Solar companies and their trade organization, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) are unsurprisingly most keen on extending the program. The SEIA rounded up 750 companies in, or tangentially involved in, the solar industry, to send a letter to Congress to this effect, saying even a one-year extension would result in an “additional 37,394 jobs,” and 2 gigawatts of solar energy by 2016.
But given the “shadow” of the Solyndra bankruptcy looming over Congress, the chances for the program’s extension don’t look good, according to National Journal.
Meanwhile, the state of the commercial solar industry in the third quarter was also far from bright, with non-utility installations falling by 14 percent and non-residential installations declining even further, by 24 percent.
The decline is due to “the four largest non-residential state markets all shrinking simultaneously,” according to the report. As the authors explain:

The commercial markets in California, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania shrank in Q3, and our expectation is that the trend will continue at least through Q4 (and likely longer in New Jersey and Pennsylvania). Given that those states comprised well over 50% of installations in the first half of the year, overall market growth will necessitate substantial demand pick-up across a number of secondary states. In particular, we are closely watching trends in Massachusetts, Colorado, Ohio, Tennessee, and Hawaii - all of which could be near-term growth markets.

Furthermore, the growing solar trade conflict between the U.S. and China isn’t helping matters any, at least not yet. Everyone in the sector is waiting to see if the U.S. government, through the Department of Commerce, will levy tariffs on imports of cheap Chinese solar panels, as has been requested by a consortium of six solar companies with operations in the U.S., who allege that their Chinese competitors have violated international trade law by artificially lowering the prices of their panels and are “dumping” them into the U.S. with the financial support of the Chinese government. (It should be noted that China, for it’s part, accuses the U.S. of doing basically the same thing except concerning another product — polysilicon solar feedstock, that raw material needed to make the panels.)
As the report notes: “The impact of these tariffs would depend on their magnitude; small tariffs might have a negligible market impact, while large tariffs would drastically alter the makeup of the supply picture.”
The authors do predict that if substantial tariffs were imposed on Chinese solar panel imports to the U.S., it would make U.S. “suppliers more price-competitive, at least in the near-term” and could even “result in a material increase in domestic market share for U.S.-manufactured modules in 2012 and beyond.”
However, Chinese companies could attempt to mitigate the tariffs by shifting production to countries where production costs are lower, including South Korea and Taiwan.
Little wonder the report has a gloomy forecast for the future. Although another 500 megatwatts of utility photovoltaic solar power is currently under construction and expected to come online in late 2011 or early 2012, “Today, the U.S. market faces more uncertainty than at any time in recent history,” the authors write.