NREL says in a new report that there is strong global demand for PV. China remains the frontrunner for solar deployment, growing its installations by 57% year on year in 2022, representing 42% of global demand. Most of China’s installations are smaller distributed projects, rather than large, centralized utility-scale projects, said the International Energy Agency. NREL says analysts expect global installations to reach 300 GW this year and 400 GW by 2025.

In the United States, PV represented about 46% of new electricity generation capacity additions in 2022. Yet solar has a long way to grow to play its part as a core technology in the energy transition. PV represents 9% of net summer capacity and 4.7% of annual generation in 2022, said NREL.

California has made the longest strides in solar, with 27.3% of its electricity generation being sourced from solar. Solar has at least a 5% share in the generation mix in 16 states as of the end of 2022.

Image: National Renewable Energy Laboratory

（Picture: Veer）