Solar Market Insight Report

Introduction

• The US solar industry installed 11.7 gigawatts direct current (GWdc) of capacity in Q3 2025, a 20% increase from Q3 2024, a 49% increase from Q2 2025, and the third largest quarter for deployment in the industry’s history. Following a low second quarter, the industry is ramping up as the end of year approaches.
• Solar accounted for 58% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid through the third quarter of 2025, with more than 30 GW installed. Solar and storage, combined, accounted for 85% of new capacity in this timeframe.
• The US added 4.7 GW of solar module manufacturing capacity in Q3, bringing the total to 60.1 GW. Additionally, new wafer manufacturing capacity was brought online via the Corning facility in Michigan. This has brought manufacturing capability across the whole solar value chain, including polysilicon, ingots, wafers, cells, and modules in the US. The actual production of these facilities still remains below domestic demand, however.
• In Q3 2025, the residential segment installed 1,088 MWdc of solar capacity, declining 4% year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. Despite an industry rush to bring projects online this year to qualify for tax credits, equipment constraints are holding back installation growth.
• The commercial solar segment grew 9% year-over-year and declined 12% quarter-over-quarter with 554 MWdc of new capacity. There were healthy installations in California as the pipeline of NEM 2.0 installations continues to come online. However, the state’s policy-driven surge began to wane this quarter.
• The community solar segment installed 267 MWdc in Q3 2025, declining 21% year-over-year and
• growing 12% quarter-over-quarter. The first projects in New Mexico’s program came online, four years after the program was originally established.
• The utility-scale segment installed 9.7 GWdc in Q3 2025, increasing 26% year-over-year and 68% quarter-over-quarter. California, Texas, and Utah each installed more than 1 GW of capacity.
• In the months following the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), the solar industry has been adapting to new and not fully settled policy. Several uncertainties still hang over the industry. Federal permitting actions remain unclear and Treasury guidance on Foreign Entity of Concern (FEOC) requirements is still months away.
• From 2025-2030, our base case outlook puts total solar deployments at 246 GWdc – virtually unchanged from our Q3 2025 outlook. While our commercial and community solar outlooks have risen slightly due to enhanced project pipeline visibility, we’ve downgraded our residential outlook as tight module availability is hindering the year-end installation rush. And while federal permitting remains a major uncertainty for many utility-scale projects, our detailed project tracking continues to affirm our prior outlook, which had already taken permitting risks for projects on federal lands into account.