U.S. solar power industry's revenue 2007-2017
Solar energy growth in the United States – additional information
The solar power industry in the United States has gradually increased its revenue over the past years, from 42.8 million U.S. dollars in 2007 to an expected 210.4 million U.S. dollars by 2017. The country has also increased its solar power generation, achieving a recent high growth of 35.8 percent between 2014 and 2015. The U.S. solar market has continued to grow with many project deployments on the pipeline. The residential solar market has also been extremely successful, reaching a capacity of 2,583 megawatts in 2016. Traditional electric utilities across the country have also begun to install solar modules, following a global trend of renewable energy expansion. Using residential solar energy provides consumers with an opportunity to function autonomously from the grid or receive feed-in tariffs. As of 2010, California began allowing homeowners to sell excess energy to their utility. In the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario - California metropolitan area, almost 19 percent of electricity generation is derived from solar sources. Feed-in tariffs have become one of the most successful mechanisms in encouraging the installation of solar power modules. Net generation of solar energy in the United States totaled 26.5 billion kilowatt hours in 2015.