Provisional figures form Wiki-Solar show that 2014 was the 5th consecutive year where utility scale solar power installations soared.

The conservative figure is over 10GW’s total – Asia and North America were the biggest installers with Australia and the Oceanics the smallest.

North America takes the cake at the top of the lot mainly due to the biggest system in the world (550MW Topaz Solar Farm in California) coming online towards the end of the year.

In Asia the main installations came from Japan, China and India who have each had a number of big installations come online in 2014. If growth continues they may surpass North America in the top spot before long.

Europe, who has experienced declines in the last two years has had their first increase – mainly due to a large amount coming online in the UK.

South Africa has had a lot of publicity with inverter manufacturing commencing in the country and a few large solar power systems such as the 74MW Sishen plant coming online. This made up the bulk of the continents total.

South America is in a similar situation where one country has saved the end total. In this case – Chile has had around 13 large power plants come online in 2014.

Australia has had a bad political climate for a while now with no end in sight as yet. The uncertainty has caused the industry to come to a grinding holt so it is not surprising to see that reflected in their totals.

With climate talks due to take place this year, renewables are going to be at the forefront of everybody’s mind. Many incentives are ending (causing a big rush to get in before they end) and solar power is becoming more and more financially viable so upward trends are looking like they will continue into this year at least.