Solar power is a major contributor to electricity supply in Australia. As of December 2023, Australia's over 3.69 million solar PV installations had a combined capacity of 34.2 GW photovoltaic (PV) solar power. In 2019, 59 solar PV projects with a combined capacity of 2,881 MW were either under construction, constructed or due to start construction having reached financial closure. Solar accounted for 12.4% of Australia's total electrical energy production in 2021.
India's solar power installed capacity was 84.28 GW AC as of 31 May 2024. India is the third largest producer of solar power globally.
Solar power includes solar farms as well as local distributed generation, mostly on rooftops and increasingly from community solar arrays. In 2023, utility-scale solar power generated 164.5 terawatt-hours (TWh), or 3.9% of electricity in the United States. Total solar generation that year, including estimated small-scale photovoltaic generation, was 238 TWh.
Historically, the main applications of solar energy technologies in Canada have been non-electric active solar system applications for space heating, water heating and drying crops and lumber. In 2001, there were more than 12,000 residential solar water heating systems and 300 commercial/ industrial solar hot water systems in use. These systems presently comprise a small fraction of Canada's energy use, but some government studies suggest they could make up as much as five percent of the country's energy needs by the year 2025.
Solar power has been growing rapidly in the U.S. state of California because of high insolation, community support, declining solar costs, and a renewable portfolio standard which requires that 60% of California's electricity come from renewable resources by 2030, with 100% by 2045. Much of this is expected to come from solar power via photovoltaic facilities or concentrated solar power facilities.
Solar power in Nevada is growing due to a Renewable Portfolio Standard which requires 50% renewable energy by 2030. The state has abundant open land areas and some of the best solar potential in the country.
Solar power in Arizona has the potential to, according to then-Governor Janet Napolitano, make Arizona "the Persian Gulf of solar energy". In 2012, Arizona had 1,106 MW of photovoltaic (PV) solar power systems, and 6 MW of concentrated solar power (CSP), bringing the total to over 1,112 megawatts (MW) of solar power. As an example, the Solana Generating Station, a 280 MW parabolic trough solar plant, when commissioned in 2013, was the largest parabolic trough plant in the world and the first U.S. solar plant with molten salt thermal energy storage.
The energy sector in Hawaii has rapidly adopted solar power due to the high costs of electricity, and good solar resources, and has one of the highest per capita rates of solar power in the United States. Hawaii's imported energy costs, mostly for imported petroleum and coal, are three to four times higher than the mainland, so Hawaii has motivation to become one of the highest users of solar energy. Hawaii was the first state in the United States to reach grid parity for photovoltaics. Its tropical location provides abundant ambient energy.
Enlight Renewable Energy is a publicly traded company, headquartered in Israel, that builds and operates solar and wind power facilities. Its shares are traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange.
A photovoltaic power station, also known as a solar park, solar farm, or solar power plant, is a large-scale grid-connected photovoltaic power system designed for the supply of merchant power. They are different from most building-mounted and other decentralized solar power because they supply power at the utility level, rather than to a local user or users. Utility-scale solar is sometimes used to describe this type of project.
The 32 megawatt AC Long Island Solar Farm (LISF), located in Upton, New York, was the largest photovoltaic array in the eastern U.S. in November 2011. The LISF is made up of 164,312 solar panels from BP Solar which provide enough electricity for roughly 4,500 households. The project will cause the abatement of more than 30,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year. LISF is co-owned by BP Solar and MetLife through Long Island Solar Farm LLC. Municipal utility Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) buys the 37-megawatt (49,600 hp) power plant's output, which is estimated at 44 GWh annually, under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA). Payments over that time are expected to total $298 million. The project was engineered by Blue Oak Energy and construction subcontracted to Hawkeye LLC from Hauppauge, New York. The plant earned the Best Photovoltaic Project of Year Award from the New York Solar Energy Industries Association. The panels are mounted at a fixed tilt angle of 35°, with the rows spaced approximately 18 ft 4 in (5.59 m) apart.
The Avenal Solar Facility is a 57.7 megawatt (MW) photovoltaic power station in Kings County, California, constructed using 450,900 SHARP-128W thin-film modules. At its completion, it was California's largest photovoltaic facility.
Solar power in Texas, a portion of total energy in Texas, includes utility-scale solar power plants as well as local distributed generation, mostly from rooftop photovoltaics. The western portion of the state especially has abundant open land areas, with some of the greatest solar and wind potential in the country. Development activities there are also encouraged by relatively simple permitting and significant available transmission capacity.
Solar power in Ohio has been increasing, as the cost of photovoltaics has decreased. Ohio installed 10 MW of solar in 2015. Ohio adopted a net metering rule which allows any customer generating up to 25 kW to use net metering, with the kilowatt hour surplus rolled over each month, and paid by the utility once a year at the generation rate upon request. For hospitals there is no limit on size, but two meters are required, one for generation, the other for utility supplied power.
The Westlands Solar Park is large-scale solar power project in Kings County south of Fresno, California. It intends to build many photovoltaic power plants with a capacity totaling upwards of 2,000 megawatts (MW), larger than the world's largest photovoltaic power plants operating as of 2017. It will be constructed on brownfield land owned by the Westlands Water District that is unusable for agriculture due to excess salt pollution.
Solar power in Missouri has been a growing industry since the early 2010s. Solar power is capable of generating 42.7% of the electricity used in Missouri from rooftop solar panels totaling 28,300 MW.
Solar power in Vermont provides almost 11% of the state's in-state electricity production as of 2018. A 2009 study indicated that distributed solar on rooftops can provide 18% of all electricity used in Vermont. A 2012 estimate suggests that a typical 5 kW system costing $25,000 before credits and utility savings will pay for itself in 10 years, and generate a profit of $34,956 over the rest of its 25-year life.
Mount Signal Solar, also known as Imperial Valley Solar Project, is a 794 MWp (614 MWAC) photovoltaic power station west of Calexico, California, United States, in the southern Imperial Valley, near the Mexican border. The facility is being developed and constructed by 8minutenergy Renewables in three phases, with two completed as of 2018. At full build-out, it will be one of the world's largest PV solar farms with a capacity of about 800 MWp (600 MWAC). The project has been supported by several environmental groups, as the power station was built on low productivity farmland.
The Victor Valley College Solar Farm is a 1.26 MWp (1.02 MWAC) concentrator photovoltaics (CPV) power station in Victorville, California. Upon completion in May 2010 it was the largest CPV project installed in North America. It was built by Sachs Electric using 122 dual-axis SF-1100S systems, each of which contains 28 SF-1100 modules. Each module contains reflective optics to concentrate sunlight 650 times onto multi-junction solar cells, allowing a greater efficiency than other photovoltaic power plants. The farm was constructed under California Solar Initiative (CSI) incentives and the projected annual output of 2.3 GW·h partially satisfies electricity consumption at the college.
