Two years after a boom in multi-megawatt, utility-scale solar photovoltaic projects in the U.S., utilities, solar developers and contractors are gearing up for new sector growth. This time, they have their eyes on smaller but mass-volume rooftop solar installations for residential, commercial, industrial and institutional buildings.
While some commercial, industrial and institutional rooftop projects are relatively large—ranging from 50 kW to 5 MW in capacity—the real volume part of the business is in the residential sector, in which solar PV systems typically are between 1 kW and 20 kW.