The U.S. utility-scale solar, wind and storage sectors added a total of 5,585 MW in the first quarter of 2024, a 28% increase year-over-year, says a new quarterly market report released Tuesday by the American Clean Power Association.
Utility-scale solar contributed 4,557 MW of that added capacity, and crossed a threshold of 100 GW deployed, according to the report. Overall, installed clean power capacity reached almost 270 GW, enough to power more than 68 million homes, ACP said.
The Energy Information Administration also released its most recent short-term energy outlook on Tuesday, reporting that “solar supplies most of our forecast growth in U.S. electricity generation this year.”
“We expect total U.S. electricity generation will grow by 3% in 2024, and we forecast generation from utility-scale solar will contribute almost 60% of that increase,” EIA said.
Wind will contribute 19% of that growth, and hydropower will contribute 13%, according to the EIA. However, the EIA noted in an April 30 report that wind generation declined in 2023 for the first time since the 1990s.
In 2023, wind generation totaled 425,235 GWh — 2.1% less than the 434,297 GWh generated in 2022, despite the 6.2 GW of new wind capacity added in 2023.
ACP’s report said that the first quarter of 2024 was a record quarter for offshore wind deployments, thanks in part to Ørsted and Eversource bringing their 132-MW South Fork Wind project online.
“While the U.S. offshore wind sector has experienced some turbulence in development schedules over the last year, the pipeline grew by 5,444 MW from Q1 2023 to 22,945 MW in Q1 2024,” ACP said.
In the first quarter, offshore wind’s project pipeline growth was up 31% year-over-year, while onshore wind was up 25%, solar was up 16% and battery storage was up 61%.
ACP said that “while energy storage deployments were flat compared to the same period in the previous year,” the significant increase in the sector’s pipeline for new projects indicates “strong future growth.”
