(Image by Como una Reina from Pixabay
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Solar module manufacturing capacity in the United States now exceeds 31 gigawatts (GW) — a nearly four-fold increase since the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) became law in 2022, according to a new report.
Per the U.S. Solar Market Insight Q3 2024 report released by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie, federal clean energy policies continue to drive manufacturing and deployment growth as the solar industry installed 9.4 GW of new electric generation capacity in Q2 2024.
In two years under the IRA, the solar industry has added 75 GW of new capacity to the grid, representing over 36% of all solar capacity built in U.S. history. Additionally, nearly 1.5 million American homes have installed solar since the IRA passed.
“The solar and storage industry is turning federal clean energy policies into action by rapidly creating jobs and powering economic growth in all 50 states, particularly in battleground states like Arizona, Nevada and Georgia,” said SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper. “We are now manufacturing historic amounts of solar energy in America, and soon, we will have enough domestic module production to supply nearly all U.S. demand for years to come.”
Texas continues to shine as a solar market, leading the nation with 5.5 GW of solar capacity installed in the first half of 2024. States with closely watched elections this November, including Texas, Florida, Nevada, Ohio and Arizona, are among the top 10 solar states in 2024, SEIA said.
“The solar industry had a great second quarter, mostly due to growth in the utility-scale segment,” said Michelle Davis, head of global solar at Wood Mackenzie and lead author of the report. “But future solar growth is being hindered by broader power sector challenges – interconnection backlogs, electrical equipment shortages, and constraints on labor availability. The industry also faces uncertainty related to newly proposed tariffs and the presidential election. There is currently a lot to navigate in the solar industry.”
The residential solar market continued to contract in Q2 2024, driven by policy changes in California and high interest rates nationally, SEIA said. The sector added 1.1 GW of new capacity in Q2, its lowest quarter in nearly three years. However, the residential solar market is expected to see growth again in 2025 and is projected to set annual records from 2026-2029.
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Annual solar installations are expected to grow at 4% on average over the next several years as the industry contends with the previously mentioned challenges. By 2029, total U.S. solar capacity is expected to double to 440 GW.
A domestic solar supply chain has been slowly strengthening in the U.S., but the viability of solar cell manufacturing in the United States is still up in the air.
The U.S. has plenty of places that assemble solar modules, but domestic production of components that comprise them is extremely limited. Only three companies are currently known to make polysilicon here- Hemlock in Michigan, Wacker in Tennessee, and REC Silicon in Washington, which produces materials for QCells. However, there are several intriguing U.S. facilities planned or already under construction that may ultimately prove we can make solar at home cost-effectively.
Canadian Solar opened a module plant in Mesquite, Texas last year, and is building a 5 GW solar cell facility to support it in Jeffersonville, Indiana.
In August, Heliene and India manufacturer Premier Energies announced plans to produce an annual capacity of 1 GW of n-Type cells at a plant near Minneapolis, Minnesota. Heliene currently sources solar cells from Premier’s Hyderabad facility for its module manufacturing operation in Mountain Iron, MN. Heliene is also partnering with NorSun, the only remaining ingot and wafer producer in the Western Hemisphere, on a 5 GW wafer factory in Tulsa, Oklahoma which is expected to open in 2026.
The only other known planned ingot and wafer site comes courtesy of Qcells in Cartersville, Georgia, set to be the first fully integrated silicon-based solar manufacturing facility built in the United States in more than a decade (and its largest ever). First announced in January 2023, the plant will make up to 3.3 GW annually of larger-format wafer sizes for distributed and utility-scale projects.
By the end of 2024, a US-made solar panel will still cost almost three times as much as one produced in China, according to BloombergNEF research. Without much of a manufacturing backbone, the United States can only compete with Asian imports by utilizing tariffs on imported goods and by incentivizing ones made at home.
https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/solar/u-s-solar-panel-manufacturing-capacity-grew-4x-since-climate-law-passed/
