US Solar Market Hit 17% Growth in 2008 Despite Economic Crisis

Washington, U.S. -- The GreenMonster checks out solar energy installations in the United States and finds out that it reached a total capacity growth by 1,265 megawatts (MW) in 2008, up from 1,159 MW installed in 2007. This brings the total installed capacity up by 17 percent to 8,775 MW. This includes 1,547 MW of electric capacity from Photovoltaics (PV) and Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and 7,636 MW of thermal capacity (water heating, pool heating, and space heating) -- according to a report from the Solar Energy Industries Association in the U.S. Well, this is good news!

The U.S. added 342 MW of PV in 2008, including 292 MW of grid-tied capacity. For grid-tied PV, this represents a 81 percent growth rate over the 161 MW of grid-tied installations in 2007 and brings total installed grid-tied PV capacity in the U.S. to over 1 gigawatt.

Installations grew especially fast in 6 states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania, where on-grid capacity additions more than doubled over 2007 figures.

At the same time, solar was not spared from the global economic meltdown that has hit all sectors of the economy. As a result of the continuing housing crisis, solar pool heater shipments remained below record levels set in 2006.