Norway’s installed solar capacity has surpassed 1 GW, standing at 1,003 MW as of mid-September, according to Elhub, the country’s central database where Norwegian grid companies register all electricity meters and report metered data.

The milestone builds on the 964 MW that were counted by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate’s (NVE) solar dashboard as of the end of July.

Hassan Gholami, a senior consultant on solar and storage at Multiconsult, told pv magazine that the difference in the two databases is down to processing times, with Elhub updating daily and NVE’s updating monthly and occasionally adding installation figures retrospectively from previous months.

“If 2026 ends within the 80 to 100 MW [of annual additions] I expect, NVE’s dashboard will also pass 1 GW around the end of the year,” he said. “My advice to market participants is to use NVE as the official reference and Elhub as the earliest signal of what is happening.”

Gholami said passing the 1 GW threshold highlights that “solar is now a permanent part of the Norwegian power system, even if it is still a small one.” He added that solar makes a natural partner to Norway’s hydropower, which supplies around 90% of the country’s electricity

“Dry years, when low rainfall leaves reservoirs short of water, tend to be sunnier and therefore good years for solar production. In wet years, solar tends to produce less, but reservoirs are full and hydropower has plenty of water to work with,” Gholami explained. “As solar grows, it will help Norway make even better use of its reservoirs as seasonal storage, making the power system less vulnerable to dry years and more secure overall.”

In reaching 1 GW of solar, Norway follows in the footsteps of its Scandinavian neighbours Denmark, which reached 1 GW around 2018 and Sweden, which hit the milestone in 2020. 

But while Denmark and Sweden have enjoyed record years for solar deployment since, Norway’s annual installations are currently slowing, with this year predicted to be the lowest annual figure since 2021. Its record for solar deployment in a calendar year dates back to 2023, at around around 300 MW.

Gholami said that in order to begin developing larger annual volumes, Norway should look to develop a steady flow of larger scale solar parks, similar to Denmark, or a mass rooftop market, as seen in Sweden.

He also emphasised that building larger-scale solar parks will be integral if Norway wants to move towards deploying 1 GW a year.

Norway’s larger-scale market is still in its infancy, with reports from NVE revealing that, as of May this year, only five of 16 licensed solar parks in Norway had been built, which Gholami said points to weak profitability and lack of grid capacity.

“A single 20 MW to 30 MW park equals roughly a fifth to a third of all the solar Norway is expected to install this year, so two or three parks completed in 2027 and 2028 would change the annual figures noticeably. But that is still far below the several hundred megawatts per year Denmark’s large parks have delivered,” he explained.

“For Norway to get near 1 GW per year, licensing and municipal approvals need to deliver 300 MW to 500 MW of new parks every year, and those parks must actually be built. This is the most important condition, and there is no sign yet that it will be met.”

Gholami added that rules allowing people to share solar power would help Norway develop a mature rooftop market, similar to Sweden.

Norway’s residential market currently lies at an almost-standstill, in part down to an optional fixed electricity price for households known as the Norgepris that has removed most of the financial incentive for rooftop solar.

However, the Norwegian Parliament has ordered a study on a guaranteed minimum price for building-mounted solar power exported to the grid, due this year. “It is the first serious movement on the demand side in several years, and its outcome will largely decide whether homeowners return to the market,” Gholami explained.

Gholami concluded that if solar large parks are licensed and built faster, and rules for sharing solar power are expanded further, annual installations could rise noticeably from 2027 and 2028 as the first licensed parks are completed. Under this trajectory, he suggested Norway could plausibly reach 1 GW per year around 2030 or 2031. 

“However, if licensing stalls and the market relies on rooftops alone, annual installations will likely stay between 100 MW and 300 MW for the rest of the decade, and the second gigawatt will take almost as long as the first,” he told pv magazine.