The Stratification of the Grid-Connected Solar Industry

In an April 2011 article for PennEnergy, Navigant’s Paula Mints discusses the development of today’s grid-connected solar industry – from its initial slow growth to sudden popularity.

Solar is sold into applications, always has been and always will be: remote industrial, remote habitation, consumer power, consumer indoor, and in the old days, simple grid-connected residential, commercial, and utility owned. For years there have been significantly more off-grid (remote) sub-applications than existed for the grid-connected market. The introduction and painfully slow applications did not change the paradigm. Things did not begin changing until several years after Germany launched its feed-in-tariff incentive model, and even then changes came slowly and incrementally (much like technology development) until bang, it seemed to change overnight.