Greenskies jumps to #1 in the U.S. C&I solar sector during Q1

PV Magazine | Christian Roselund
June 20, 2016

The first quarter of 2016 saw a shake-up in the ranking of leading commercial and industrial (C&I) solar installers in the United States, according to the latest report from GTM Research’s Leaderboard service. The company says that Greenskies Renewable Energy replaced SolarCity as the leading installer in the space during the quarter with a 5.5% market share, compared to SolarCity’s 4.9%.

SolarCity remains by far the largest installer of distributed solar PV in the nation, due to its dominance of the less fragmented residential sector. However it was surpassed in C&I during the quarter by Greenskies, largely due to the Connecticut-based solar project developer and builder’s deal to install solar PV on 180 Target stores, for a total of 100 MW.

Greenskies expects to install these systems by the end of 2016. The company notes that it has risen rapidly in the rankings, coming in seventh place a year ago and growing to the third-largest C&I installer in the fourth quarter of 2015.

However, it may be too soon to say if SolarCity’s fall from first place in the C&I space will last. “Q1 is typically SolarCity's smallest quarter, whereas many other commercial developers have less consistent seasonality in their installations,” GTM Research Senior Analyst, Solar Markets Nicole Litvak told pv magazine.

Litvak also notes that SolarCity continues to grow in the space, and increased its C&I installation volume from the first quarter of 2015.