A recent report from the advocacy group Environment America said U.S. solar power capacity would need to grow at an annual rate of 22 percent in order for solar to provide 10 percent of the nation’s electricity in 2030, from less than 1 percent now.

So far, so good.

Fresh industry data shows 1,354 megawatts of new PV was installed in the third quarter this year,  driving year-to-date capacity  gains to 3,966 MW, compared to 2,647 MW in the first three quarters of 2013 – a nearly 50 percent increase. In the third quarter itself, installations were up 41 percent over 2013.

The Solar Energy Industries Association and GTM Research, who collaborated on the report released on Tuesday, now say around 6.5 gigawatts will be installed this year, a 36 percent gain over 2013.

That’s up from the forecast issued at the beginning of the year – 6 GW on 26 percent growth – suggesting that growth rates that had been in steep decline might be stabilizing. Consider the numbers: In 2011, solar PV grew by 109 percent. In 2012, working off a much larger base, the growth rate cooled considerably, to 76 percent. In 2013, it again fell by a big margin, to 41 percent.

Utility-scale installations continue to drive most of the growth – 825 MW was added in Q3 2014, making it six quarters in a row that the sector has accounted for more than half of all new capacity. Outside utility scale, residential solar showed the way, up 13 percent over the second quarter and 58 percent over last year’s third quarter, to a record 308 MW.

“Residential solar has become a remarkably consistent, growing market,” Shayle Kann, senior vice president at GTM Research, said in a statement. “By the end of this year there will be more than 600,000 homes outfitted with solar, and we see no signs of a slowdown next year. By 2017, we expect the residential sector to be the largest in the U.S. solar market.”

That year – 2017 – looms large for solar. At the end of 2016, the federal Investment Tax Credit for solar will ratchet down from 30 percent to 10 percent. The new quarterly report noted that “more than 50 percent (of) residential PV came on-line without any state incentive,” but the industry is fighting to maintain that key federal incentive.

A host of other known unknowables play into solar’s continued growth prospects, including the fate of the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which could motivate many states to incentivize solar. Then there’s the perhaps even larger issue of how policymakers and regulators referee the increasingly tense relationship between utilities and distributed generation as solar becomes more and more economical.

Solar has come to be widely seen as a threat to utilities, and utility reluctance to open a wide door to rooftop solar – by fighting full net metering – has led many on the solar side to see utilities as the enemy. But a GTM conference on Tuesday that included panel participants from both sides (and in between) produced no bloodshed – and even points of agreement.

One glimmer of consensus: across-the-board endorsement of more community solar. James Avery, senior VP for power supply at San Diego Gas & Electric, called for more of it, as did SunPower VP for market strategy and policy Tom Starrs.

Julia Hamm, president and CEO of the Solar Electric Power Association noted, “We have 500 utility members and there isn’t one of them who isn’t interested in community solar,” reflecting how utilities, even if they aren’t sure exactly how to do it, are increasingly aware of the necessity of accommodating solar.

To help tackle the long-term challenge, Hamm’s organization has created something called the 51^st State Challenge. Through the next two months, they’re taking “submissions on how energy markets could be created in the 51^st state.” The idea is for a review panel that includes figures as disparate as solar pioneer Jigar Shah and former Duke CEO Jim Rogers to narrow the submissions down to a handful or fewer approaches that can form the basis for deeper discussion.