A report issued by the Solar Energy Industries Association
(SEIA) showed that the U.S. solar market grew 67 percent from
2009 to 2010. Dollar growth grew from $3.6 billion to $6 billon.
California installed the most panels last year with 258.9
megawatts added followed by New Jersey at 137.1 and Nevada with
61.4. The top ten states after these three were Arizona,
Colorado, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Florida, North Carolina, and
Texas. According to SEIA the U.S. now has in place 2.6 gigawatts
of solar capacity. The biggest factors for solar growth came
from public utilities that built solar specific plants. SEIA
attributes the investment on the part of public utilities to the
Department of Energy loan program that provided funding to build
these new solar plants. Future build outs could depend on the
DOE’s continuation of said program. Still, despite growth, the
U.S. actually fell behind other countries in 2010 in terms of
global photovoltaic installation. The U.S. was home to only 5
percent of the world’s insta