The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) released its 2009 review today indicating strong growth across the solar market last year.  Here are some highlights…

* US solar electricity capacity increased 37% driven by strong demand in residential and utility scale markets
* 17K new solar jobs created for a total of 46K in the US
* Industry revenue grew 38% to nearly $4 billion
* Solar manufacturing production increased 7% from 2008
* Residential grid-tied solar installations doubled to 156MW, while non residential grid-tied installations declined 2% from 2008 levels.
* Utility solar market tripled cumulative grid-tied PV capacity to 66MW and the total capacity across all solar technologies increased to 17GW or enough to power 3.4 million homes
* No surprise that California led in new solar capacity at 220MW.. 2nd place New Jersey wasn’t close at 57MW
* United States ranked 4th in new solar capacity with 481MW .. pathetic!  Japan and Italy beat us last year.
* Germany was the reigning champ again with nearly 4000MW in new capacity.  The Czech Republic wasn’t far behind the US at 411MW.  Now you see why I say the US solar industry is pathetic.

The full report is worth a read.. Get it here