The US is making and deploying more solar panels than ever before

Despite the policy uncertainty facing renewables as the Trump administration prepares to take the wheel, the outlook for U.S. solar is generally positive, according to the just-released U.S. Solar Market Insight Q4 2024 report from the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and energy analysis firm Wood Mackenzie.

This year, the solar industry is set to break installation records and achieve significant manufacturing milestones — including the return of silicon solar cell production to the U.S. for the first time since 2019.

As a testament to the effectiveness of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), domestic solar module manufacturing capacity has nearly quintupled since 2022 — courtesy of new or expanded factories in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas that benefited from the law’s tax credits. The U.S. added a record-breaking 9.3 gigawatts of new solar module production capacity in the third quarter alone.

The IRA is also responsible for bringing solar cell manufacturing back to the U.S., with Suniva (which filed for bankruptcy in 2017) restarting production at its Norcross, Georgia factory in November. Solar cells do the actual conversion of sunlight to electricity, but domestic production was halted due to lower-cost imports. The vast majority of the world’s cells are made in China and four Southeast Asian countries whose solar exports are now subject to steep U.S. tariffs.

The U.S. currently has close to 40 gigawatts in module manufacturing capacity, according to Wood Mackenzie — enough to meet almost all of its own demand for panels. But the country will still need to rely on imported solar cells for the foreseeable future; less than 10 gigawatts of cell capacity is under construction in the states.

With the exception of the residential rooftop segment, U.S. solar installations are overperforming in the face of trade headwinds. Corporate and state renewable energy goals are creating high demand for solar, though Wood Mackenzie expects the energy source’s blistering growth to taper off over the next five years as developers face the same woes as the broader power generation sector: a limited workforce, equipment constraints, and interconnection delays.

According to the report, the U.S. will deploy a total of 40.5 gigawatts of solar power this year, led by Texas and Florida, with annual volumes hitting at least 43 gigawatts through 2029.

While those annual totals put the U.S. well ahead of top installers India, Germany, and Brazil, America remains a laggardly distant second to China, which will add approximately 334 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2024, according to energy research firm Ember.

Large-scale installations have dominated the solar industry in the U.S. for years, and that trend will continue, driven by utility and corporate demand for low-cost clean energy. Solar developers have a strong utility-scale project pipeline concentrated in Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan, and Texas and are expected to install about 32 gigawatts, an amount well above 2023 volumes.

The residential segment is still in the grips of a decline that started last year, but the report forecasts that the slump will end next year. In 2025, the home rooftop solar market will add more than 6 gigawatts and grow by 21 percent, Wood Mackenzie and SEIA predict, driven by a stabilized albeit diminished California market and interest rate cuts. The firms also see growth ahead for the traditionally underperforming commercial solar market, which had a record-breaking third quarter. Community solar installations are expected to jump by 10 percent in 2024.

The outlook for domestic solar remains positive despite the shifting trade, tariff, and tax credit sands of the incoming Trump administration, and that comes down to two straightforward reasons: Solar is the cheapest source of new power generation by far, and it’s an increasingly large employer in the U.S., particularly in Republican-led states.