Would you believe that there are now more people working in the solar industry than at oil rigs and gas fields? With a 20 percent increase in size, the solar industry added more than 35,000 jobs — making about 209,000 solar energy employees working in the U.S. alone. From solar panel installers and designers, to engineers and sales personnel, the solar industry significantly outsizes oil and gas construction and is nearly three times the size of the total coal mining workforce.

New analysis by the in-house market research team at PV-Tech’s parent company Solar Media Ltd., can exclusively reveal that Hanwha Q-CELLS was the number 1 solar PV cell manufacturer in 2016, based on megawatts of cells produced in-house across the year.

The growth of photovoltaic (PV) technology around the world continues, and the global success story has now reached a further milestone: 300 gigawatts (GWp) of total installed solar power capacity around the world. This was announced by the German Solar Association (BSW-Solar) in Berlin, on the basis of their own calculations.

Mark Nicholson, head of special projects at N Group Priority One in Mornington Peninsula, Victoria, saw an opportunity in solar where others didn’t.