The US Solar market set a new record for second quarter sales of over 1.1GW, up 21% over the same quarter in 2013. Analysts expect 2014 to be a banner year, with 6.5GW as a forecast. Which will be 36% higher than 2013 and more than 650% over 2010 levels.
Furthermore over 50% of new solar capacity installed in Q2 2014 was utility-scale PV. Across other segments, residential PV resumed its steady incremental growth. With Q1 2014 being the largest quarter ever for concentrating PV (due to completion of Ivanpah). The combined new solar capacity installed, including PV and CSP for Q1 and Q2 2014 crossed 2.6GW in 2014. This was well over 50% of all new US generating capacity (ahead of new natural gas capacity of ~1 GW). As revealed on FERC Infrastructure Update.
Q2 2014 was the third consecutive quarter when more than 1GW of solar capacity was installed in the US. Continued by the distributed generation boom in which residential and non-residential installations added more than 500MW for the second time ever. While California still accounts for 50% of all new solar installations. New markets continue to open up: New Mexico, Missouri and Indiana made it to the top-10 list of US markets in Q2 2014 for the first time. Marking the clear trend as consumers can now benefit from lower-cost of distributed power.