Top 10 US Commercial Solar Developers Account For Only 42% Of Market
Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription or on Stripe.
Or support our Kickstarter campaign!
The top 10 commercial solar developers in the US only account for 42% of the total US commercial market, according to new figures published this week.
According to figures published in GTM Research’s latest report, U.S. Commercial Solar Landscape 2016-2020, the US commercial solar market is much more fragmented than its companion residential solar market, where the top three companies installed nearly half of the residential segment total in 2015.
“The fragmented commercial developer landscape is largely the result of bottlenecks in the customer origination process that make it difficult for any individual player to consistently grow,” according to Senior Solar Analyst and report author Nicole Litvak. “There are therefore no dominant players driving the overall market growth, as SolarCity does in residential.”
As can be seen in the above graphs, the commercial solar industry still has leading players, with SolarCity and SunPower leading the way. The 13 leading national commercial developers, as highlighted in the report, have a number of common criteria for their success, according to GTM, including “an emphasis on originating large deals for Fortune 500 customers, a captive source of low-cost capital, and the ability to offer ancillary products and services such as energy storage.”
Additionally, the report highlights how regional developers are having more success in the commercial solar sector than national developers, however, this also results in more difficulty in financing the projects. “The commercial market has struggled to efficiently match individual projects with financing,” added Litvak. “Furthermore, there is almost a complete lack of tax equity financing available for systems with non-creditworthy customers.”
Support CleanTechnica via Kickstarter
Sign up for CleanTechnica's Weekly Substack for Zach and Scott's in-depth analyses and high level summaries, sign up for our daily newsletter, and follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Sign up for our daily newsletter for 15 new cleantech stories a day. Or sign up for our weekly one on top stories of the week if daily is too frequent.
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
CleanTechnica's Comment Policy
