Utility-Scale Outshining Rooftop Solar As Global Solar Market Explodes

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Last Updated on: 16th May 2025, 07:31 pm

Diving into the Snapshot of Global PV Markets report from the International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Program (IEA PVPS) earlier today, I found a handful of interesting highlights. A few more were buried toward the end.

We’ve already reported on the fact that solar power now dominates new power capacity — 92.5% of new power capacity was from renewables in 2024, and 77.3% of that was solar PV. However, new power capacity is not the same as electricity generation. How about share of electricity generation?

Well, as you can see in this pie chart, solar PV does indeed dominate electricity generation from new power capacity from renewables. Unfortunately, the title of that chart is a little misleading, because it looks like it’s referring to electricity from all new power capacity. However, it is just for renewables. But a key is that solar PV still accounted for a huge share — the majority — of electricity from newly installed renewables.

“With a lower capacity factor than wind or hydro, the share of generation coming from PV is lower than capacity shares — despite this, about 60% of new generation form renewable sources was from PV,” the IEA writes.

So, yes, solar is dominating new electricity generation.

There’s one more interesting trend, though, that is perhaps not as catchy of a headline — but it’s what I put in the headline anyway, because it’s what really struck me as a new bit of information and there are some side points to make about it.

Utility-scale solar and rooftop solar were almost evenly split for several years there, but in the past couple of years, utility-scale solar has really grown by leaps and bounds. As much as rooftop solar power has exploded, utility-scale solar has significantly outshone it.

What we’re seeing is the end phase of a superior technology taking over the electricity generation market. Solar PV costs have come down for decades, but now they’re so low that nothing can truly compete most of the time. While the lower costs help rooftop solar to continue growing, it is really superpowering utility-scale solar. Utility-scale solar competes on a massive scale with other massive-scale power projects, and as it has become unbeatable, it is growing at an unprecedented scale.