The real story on solar - growth, not Solyndra
Posted on Dec 20, 2011 |
This piece appeared in The Desert Sun's Green Desert Blog. You can access the piece here.
By K Kaufman
The Solar Energy Industries Association and GreenTech Media released their quartery report on solar development in the U.S. today, and the one word notably absent from all 22 pages of the executive summary was — wait for it — Solyndra.
The failed solar panel manufacturer did get a few mentions during the press conference that SEIA and GreenTech held to discuss the report this morning — I listened in on the event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. — but mostly to point up how one failure in the industry has overshadowed its spectacular growth.
The photovoltaic side of the industry — solar panels or PV — had a recordbreaking third quarter, with 449.2 megawatts installed, a 39 percent increase over the second quarter and a whopping 140 percent increase over third quarter 2010. California accounted for 196.7 megawatts — or close to 44 percent — of the total.
Just for scale, the NextEra-GE Desert Sunlight project now under construction near Desert Center is 550 megawatts. When completed, it will provide enough power for 160,000 homes.
The third quarter figures put U.S. installations over 1 gigawatt for 2011, the first time the U.S. has passed the 1 gig milestone in a year — and growth is projected for the fourth quarter as well. The U.S. now has 3.1 gigs of PV solar connected to grids across the country, according to the report.
“It’s a good news story,” said Rhone Resch, president of SEIA. “(The U.S.) has made a strategic investment in solar, and we are seeing it pay of…”
Read the rest of the piece here.
