How much will solar save you? With a little self-research, you can probably find out in about 60 seconds!
You probably know which states have been strong solar growth states over the past several years - California, Hawaii, Arizona, New Jersey, North Carolina. But, there are 4 more states and one city that are picking up some serious steam in the solar power arena and that you probably wouldn't guess are primed to become solar leaders.
GTM Research, which revealed these at Solar Power International last week, has termed them "hidden growth opportunities." GTM Research projects a total of over 1 gigawatt (1 billion watts) of solar PV demand in these markets between the second half of this year (2013) and 2016. That's a lot. Solar panel suppliers are going to love these 5 markets.
So, let's very quickly check out these hot (or soon to be hot) solar markets (in no particular order):
1. Minnesota
Not exactly the sunniest state in the US, state requirements that utilities get 1.5% of their electricity from solar power and 10% from distributed, small-scale power generation systems (systems 20 kilowatts or smaller, such as home solar systems), as well as net metering (which allows solar power producers to sell their electricity back to the grid at retail electricity prices) for systems up to 1 megawatt (MW) in size, could help boost Minnesota's solar power capacity from about 13 MW today to about 450 MW by 2016. We'll see...
Notably, for homeowners who go solar in Minnesota, you're expected (on average) to get a 10% internal rate of return (IRR) on your investment, which beats the S&P 50-year CAGR of 9.9% - very, very good.
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