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"This year's report demonstrates that solar electricity is finally on the radar screen of utilities across the country," said Julia Hamm, executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association. "Solar plants large and small are ready for significant build-out, and the utility industry is moving quickly toward mass adoption to meet a variety of business needs."
Many utilities doubled the amount of solar power over the previous year. Installed solar capacity of the top ranked utilities grew from 711 megawatts to 882 megawatts. Renewable portfolio standards, pending carbon policy, and the costs of power generation and fuel resources were cited as the main reasons solar-generated electricity was seen as reasons to adopt the technology.
Historically, the solar power market has been dominated by customer-driven installations, but utility installations are gaining an ever larger share. The report showed that 88 percent of new annual growth was in the service territories of the Top Ten utilities. The distribution of solar power is also spreading geographically. The report shows that 2008 solar power growth came almost entirely from thousands of distributed generation projects.
The leader in the 2008 survey was San Francisco-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company. PGE added 85 megawatts of new capacity, which was over 44 percent of the survey total. Second and third were Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric. On a cumulative solar megawatt basis, Southern California Edison was ranked first, followed by Pacific Gas & Electric and NV Energy, a Nevada utility.
Ninety-two utilities participated in this year's survey, an increase of more than 80 percent over last year, reflecting increased utility industry interest, SEPA said. Participating utilities had an average of 11 megawatts in their cumulative portfolio, and the Top Ten utilities represented 93 percent of all solar capacity. California investor-owned utilities are likely to retain a lead in their overall cumulative rankings.
Prior to the economic downturn last fall, there were predictions of a 30-fold increase in solar capacity between 2009 and 2016, representing more than $230 billion in investment and associated economic activity.
This year's report is based on the 2008 Utility Solar Electricity Survey completed by utilities in April 2009. The report catalogs how much solar electricity was interconnected by surveyed utilities in calendar year 2008 and what was installed cumulatively up through the end of 2008, including both photovoltaics and concentrating solar power.
The survey included all solar electricity generation integrated into the utility's portfolio: utility-owned, customer or a third party, and whichever side of the meter it was connected. As in surveys of this type, the utilities chose to participate and may not be representative of the entire U.S.
Report highlights include:
- Participating utilities saw an average increase of 2 megawatts and a median of 0.1 megawatts of solar added to their portfolio in 2008.
- The Top Ten utilities represented 88 percent of the survey megawatt total.
- Utilities in seven different states placed in the Top Ten.
- Participating utilities saw an average increase of 33 watts per customer and a median of 1 watt per customer of solar added to their portfolio in 2008.
- Nine of the Top Ten utilities are from California and Hawaii.
