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There’s now enough solar power installed in the United States to power approximately one-third of the homes in the nation. There’s enough capacity installed to power around 50 million US homes.
That’s according to the latest edition of the US Solar Market Insight report, which is produced by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie. The report highlights that 11.4 GWdc of new solar power capacity was added in Q2 2026. That’s 45% more than in Q2 2025 and 43% more than in Q1 2026.
The current federal government may be very anti-solar, but the solar industry is marching on nonetheless. We are well past the point where solar power doesn’t beat the other new power options most of the time. Naturally, the majority of the public still thinks of solar as a very niche, small power source. Few people realize that solar power has dominated the market for a while now. (Adding solar and storage together, they accounted for a whopping 70% of the new power market in the second quarter.) “Solar and storage have grown to a scale most Americans have yet to fully realize and we simply can’t meet America’s growing energy needs without these technologies,” noted SEIA CEO Tim Pawlenty.
