The Home Run of the U.S. Solar PV Market is Continuing, as the new "U.S. Solar Market Insight - Q3 2012" report reveals that the U.S. has installed 684 MW in Q3 2012, making it the third best Quarter installations in history.
Though this represents a 12% decline from Q2 2012, the market still grew by 44% QoQ - YoY. Distributed generation (DG) market also had a record year by installing 20% more QoQ.
Residential Segment:
The U.S. Residential PV installations grew incrementally in Q3 2012. In each of the last five quarters, residential installations have grown between 3% and 21% on a national level, which makes the residential sector by far the most stable segment in the U.S. market. Also California led the way in Q3 2012 with 52.4 MW installed, up from 46.4 MW in Q2 2012. Second-tier residential markets also generally had a strong quarter, with expansion in Arizona, Hawaii, and Colorado. The one exception was New Jersey, where residential installations declined along with the rest of the market. Third-party owned residential PV systems continue to far outnumber direct purchases by homeowners in mature markets.
Commercial/ Non Residential Segment:
After a weak Q2, the non-residential market bounced back in Q3 2012 with 24% quarterly growth. This is particularly impressive given that New Jersey (formerly the largest non- residential market in the country) dropped by 24 MW in Q3. States with notable growth in Q3 included California and Massachusetts. As with other market segments, the non-residential market tends to trend upward in the fourth quarter of each year as installers rush to complete projects within a calendar year. We expect this to remain true in 2012, particularly in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts.
Utility Segment:
There were 21 utility projects (or phases of projects) completed in Q3 2012 ranging in size from 300 kW to 115 MW. Most notable among these were phases of some of the largest projects in development – Agua Caliente in Arizona and California Valley Solar Ranch in California. There are currently 2.1 GWdc of utility PV projects operating in the U.S. as compared to 10 GW of projects with PPAs that are not yet operating. Of this 10 GW, fully 3 GW comes from the ten largest projects in construction, all of which will be selling power to utilities in California. The imbalance between completed and late-stage development projects will result in significant installation growth figures in the 2012-2014. However, new utility PPA procurement is down and developers are having a harder time finding buyers than they did even one year ago. This is expected to have a meaningful impact on installations in 2015-2016, which is why our forecast for the utility market shows slowing growth in the out years.
Installed Price of Solar Dipping:
Quarter-over-quarter, the national weighted-average system price rose by 3.2%, from $3.45/W to $3.56/W. Year-over-year, average installed costs declined by 19.3%. This capacity-weighted number is heavily impacted by the volume of utility-scale solar installed in a given quarter, of which there was substantially more installed in Q2 2012 compared to Q3 2012. Within each market segment individually, average installed prices were down across the board.
Full Report can be downloaded here
Source: GTM-SEIAArticle written by Adrian Smith
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