Highlights from RE+ Southeast presentation by Abigail Ross Hopper, President and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

U.S. Electricity Demand is Soaring – Creating Opportunities

The U.S. is experiencing the largest increase in electricity demand since World War II. 

In her remarks at the RE+ Southeast conference last month, SEIA president Abby Hopper emphasized that this exponential increase in demand is creating opportunity for all power providers – and that the solar industry is well-positioned to help meet the demand. 

States are competing for economic investments like data centers and these power-intensive projects often want their power to come from clean energy sources and they need new power to come on-line fast.

Solar plants and battery storage can be constructed faster than any other technology. 

“If you want to build quickly, and you want to meet market demand, and you want to provide your customers with fast, reliable energy, there’s one way to do it and that’s with solar and storage,” said Abby.

“This is our competitive advantage and we can build it right here in the United States.”  

Solar Industry Growth

2024 was the largest year ever for the U.S. solar industry with 50 GW of power installed. And annual installations are expected to be between 40 and 50 GW over the next five years. 

Abby began her role at SEIA at the start of 2017, so she has experienced significant swings in the solar landscape and had encouraging words for the crowd.

“Where the solar and storage industry was in 2017 is nothing like where we are in 2025,” she said.

“It’s different in size, it’s different in scale, it’s different in price, it’s different in our contract structures … it’s different in terms of our power in terms of the size of the market we share and the size of our manufacturing base.”

U.S. Solar Manufacturing Development

Abby also shared the powerful success story of U.S. solar manufacturing.

In 2022, the U.S. was ranked 14th in the world in solar manufacturing capacity – today we are ranked 2nd! We are currently able to meet 100 percent of domestic demand with American-made solar modules. 

“This is just the beginning of our American success story,” Abby said. “Modules are the end-product – but we also have wafer investments, we have cell investments, we have racking investments, we have tracker investments, we have inverter investments, we have glass investments.”

And these solar and storage supply chain investments are happening around the country with a high concentration in the Southeast. 

We’re seeing this kind of manufacturing growth here in North Carolina. Just last month, Boviet Solar opened its first U.S. manufacturing facility in Greenville, investing $294 million and creating more than 900 jobs. Nearly 110,000 North Carolinians work in the clean energy sector, making North Carolina ninth in the nation for clean energy jobs.