Norway added 43 MW of solar between January and July this year, according to provisional figures published by the Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE), taking the country’s cumulative solar capacity to 964 MW by the end of last month.

Hassan Gholami, a senior consultant on solar and storage at Multiconsult, told pv magazine that while the 43 MW total could rise by roughly 10-15% as NVE continues to register installations from the previous months, this year’s market growth remains the slowest recorded since 2021.

Solar systems between 100 kW and 1 MW in size, most often deployed on commercial and industrial (C&I) rooftops, make up around 60% of this year’s installations to date. 

Gholami said the clearest success in Norway’s solar market currently is that the C&I segment continues to function without direct subsidies.

“Installations for self-consumption are carrying the market as they remain the only bankable case,” he explained. “Commercial property, logistics and retail, agriculture and municipal buildings all have substantial daytime load, and with module prices where they are, avoiding the full delivered cost of electricity on every self-consumed kWh is enough to justify the investment without subsidy.”

Gholami predicted that the C&I share should hold and may even grow next year, when considering that commercial development cycles typically take between 9 and 18 months from decision making to commissioning.

In contrast, Norway’s residential solar market has effectively stalled, with around 2 MW across 172 PV systems installed in seven months, against roughly 1,200 new household systems registered across the whole of 2025.

Norway’s fixed electricity price for households, known as the Norgepris, has removed most of the residential payback case, Gholami said.

“Beyond that, there is still no minimum compensation for exported power, so production above self-consumption is fully exposed to low daytime summer prices and the cannibalisation effect, and financing costs remain high by European standards,” he added

Gholami said the residential market will not recover without a specific support measure such as a guaranteed minimum price for exported power, restored support from [government enterprise] Enova at a meaningful level, or VAT relief on installation.

He added that a study mandated by the Norwegian parliament into a guaranteed minimum price for building-mounted solar power exported to the grid is due to be completed this year.

“Views on the level vary: Before its collapse [leading residential supplier] Solcellespesialisten argued that a floor of NOK 0.50 ($0.054)/kWh would not be enough to restore the sector, and a representative proposal in March put NOK 1.00/kWh on the table,” Gholami explained. “Whether it lands is a separate question, but it is the first serious movement on the demand side in some years.”

While Norway’s utility-scale solar market remains in its relative infancy, Gholami told pv magazine projects are moving from licensing to construction. NVE licensed a 31.4 MW PV project in June, to be developed by Norwegian company Energeia in the municipality Østre Toten. It is the country’s second-larger project under development following a 46 MW agrivoltaic project belonging to Energeia and Norwegian utility Eidsiva.

Norway is also approving its first co-located storage installations, Gholami added, with the 7 MW Furuseth solar plant approved to add a 5 MW/13.5 MWh battery, while Energeia and Eidsiva’s agrivoltaic project is set to integrate a 6 MW/12 MWh battery.

A licence-exemption threshold introduced last year, which means plants up to 10 MW now require approval from the host municipality rather than a licence from NVE, is also helping to shape the development pipeline for ground-mounted projects, Gholami explained. “In most cases this means a zoning process or a dispensation,” he said.

Gholami forecasts this year’s installations to land between 80 MW and 100 MW, compared to 132 MW in 2025 and 172 MW in 2024, but said the utility-scale market could change the picture quickly in coming years. “A single 20–30 MW park commissioned in one year adds more than half of current national annual deployment, so if two or three licensed projects reach commissioning in 2027–28 the annual figures become considerably larger,” he explained.

Away from installations, Gholami said Norway’s solar sector has lost capacity across the value chain. Following Solcellespesialisten’s bankruptcy in December, solar energy companies Sesol and Solintegra AS have since gone into bankruptcy proceedings. “Beyond the job losses, this is a loss of trained installation capacity, and it leaves customers holding manufacturer warranties but no installer warranty,” Gholami added. “Rebuilding that capacity will take longer than rebuilding demand.”

Regulatory changes brought into effect in Norway this year include energy sharing agreements for businesses and a new connection obligation which requires local distribution companies to be responsible for building the final connection for new power plants connecting at up to and including 22 kV, rather than requiring the developer to apply to NVE for a separate gird licene for the line.

“Both are useful, but both build pipelines rather than deliver megawatts in the same year,” Gholami said.

During this year’s Intersolar, pv magazine spoke to Mulitconsult’s Mette Kristine Kanestrøm about the recent developments in Norway’s solar and storage sectors.