10 US Solar Stats for Your Christmas Parties – CleanTechnica

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Have some holiday parties coming up and need some fun and interesting stats to share when the conversation gets dull or turns in a wrong direction? We’re here to help. Well, the US Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) is here to help. It just released its US Solar Market Insight Report for Q3 2024 and the associated “Solar Cheat Sheet” has a number of stats you can use.

1. The price of solar PV panels has gone down 37% in the past 10 years.
2. A new solar project was installed every 39 seconds last year.
3. 5,289,576 solar power systems have been installed in the US (or, to keep it simple, you can just say more than 5 million).
4. There are now 10,000+ US solar businesses.
5. There are 279,447 solar jobs across the US.
6. There’s currently enough solar power installed in the United States to power 37.6 million homes.
7. The value of the US solar market in 2023 was $67.6 billion.
8. There are currently 220 gigawatts of solar power installed in the country.
9. Solar power has prevented 227 million metric tons of CO2 emissions in the USA.
10. Solar power accounted for 64% of new electricity generation capacity in the first three quarters of 2024.

Overall, key talking points are that solar power now accounts for most of the new power capacity added to the US grid, solar power prices have come down tremendously in the past decade, and, if you really want to go there, billions of dollars are being invested into solar cell and solar panel manufacturing capacity in the US — reshoring thousands of manufacturing jobs — thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.

There are a lot more interesting solar stats and facts for cleantech nerds like us, but I think these are some key simple ones that can be useful when talking with normal people to help spread some good news and hopefully help inspire more solar purchases and more support for sensible solar policies.

The first 6 and the 10th one are probably the most useful for basic conversations, while 7, 8, and 9 could be useful if you’re going deeper into matters of the economy and investment, the utility grid, or climate change and CO2 emissions.