Dive Brief:

• The Solar Energy Industries Association has predicted a record year for solar energy in every U.S. market segment, despite sluggish growth in the first quarter in the non-residential and utility solar markets.

• The first quarter is traditionally slow for solar installations, largely because of bad weather. But between January and March, residential installations grew 11% over the final quarter of last year and 76% over the first quarter of 2014, marking solar’s largest residential quarter ever, the report, conducted by GTM Research, said.

• An emerging trend: Solar is increasingly being installed in conjunction with at least one other, related technology, like distributed energy storage, electricity load control, demand response services or electric vehicle charging.

Dive Insight:

In the first quarter, more new homes were equipped with solar than natural gas, the SEIA reported, and solar accounted for 51% of all new electric generation.

That offered “a clear glimpse into the future role that the residential sector will play as a primary driver of not only solar market growth, but the overall electricity generation mix,” Shayle Kann, senior vice president at GTM Research, said in the study’s executive summary.

Kann predicted more than 3 million homes will install solar over five years.