US sees residential solar surge past commercial-scale installs

In the US, the Energy Information Agency is the leading source of statistics on the production and use of electricity. But it is geared toward the traditional power grid, getting lots of its data directly from utilities or the regional grids. Although residential solar has generally been a rounding error in these numbers, that situation is gradually changing as the price of hardware has plunged.

Just how much it has changed was driven home when the EIA analyzed the amount of net-metered solar hardware out there (net metering is used to track electricity fed into the grid by residential consumers). It turns out that, in 2014, residential solar capacity actually passed the capacity of utility-scale facilities. By the end of the year, homes accounted for 3.3 Gigawatts of capacity; large-scale facilities were at 2.9Gw.

California had nearly half the residential capacity, trailed by Arizona, Hawaii, New Jersey, and New York. For commercial-scale facilities, Massachusetts replaced Hawaii on that list. (Hawaii has expensive electricity, but lacks space for large-scale commercial installs). The frequency with which states in the Northeast appear on the list is a clear indication that factors other than the potential productivity of the hardware dominate decisions on the use of solar.

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