Solar Installation Rates. Image Credit: GTM Research.

Solar System Installed In US Every 4 Minutes

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

In the United States, a solar system is installed every 4 minutes (360 solar systems per day), according to GTM Research. For such a small industry, that is massive growth. This means that, soon, the solar industry will no longer be small.

Of course, this is partly due to the fact that the US is a very large country with a population of more than 316 million people. However, this is still a tremendous growth rate, even for a country of this size. To put this into perspective, that is one solar system installed every time there is a net population increase of 18 people (based on a net gain every 13 seconds).

In 2006, only 1 solar system was installed every 80 minutes, 1/20th of what it is today!

Solar Installation Rates. Image Credit: Shayle Kann of GTM Research.

According to a GTM article on this new finding, the US is expected to have 1 million cumulative residential solar power systems by 2016. Despite this rapid growth, complacency is not yet recommended, as the solar industry is still relatively small, and the climate change situation requires even faster growth than this.

How can this required growth increase be induced? Here are some ideas:

  1. Interest-free government loans for rooftop solar as an alternative to tax rebates;
  2. Getting homeowners that rent out their homes on board somehow;
  3. Apply financial incentives to the prices of solar systems up front, rather than having customers claim the rebates afterwards.

Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Nicholas Brown

Has a keen interest in physics-intensive topics such as electricity generation, refrigeration and air conditioning technology, energy storage, and geography. His website is: Kompulsa.com.

Nicholas Brown has 594 posts and counting. See all posts by Nicholas Brown