The ‘Clean Power Annual Market Report 2023’, the latest publication of the American Clean Power Association (ACP), makes for positive reading for the renewables sector, with the US adding 33.8GW of new utility-scale renewable projects in 2023 and solar and wind power accounting for 77% of all new electricity generation capacity additions.
The installations have pushed the US’ cumulative clean power generation capacity above 250GW for the first time, and reverses a trend which saw fewer clean power installs in 2022 than in 2021, the first time that renewable capacity installations had fallen, year-on-year, since 2017. The solar sector was the driving force behind much of this change, with close to 20GW of new utility-scale solar projects coming online in 2023, compared to around 5GW of new wind and storage capacity.
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New solar installations were particularly significant in some of the country’s leading states for renewable power, suggesting that there is still ample potential for new solar installations in mature markets. Of the 15 states that installed the most renewables capacity in 2023, solar made up the majority of these capacity additions in 10 states.
The Texas solar sector was particularly impressive, adding more than 5.6GW of new solar capacity, more than any other state installed across all renewable technologies, and more than the total renewable capacity additions in Arizona, Florida and Colorado combined. These states are among the fastest-growing states for solar power, according to figures released last week by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), and is the latest positive development for the Texas solar sector, which has long sought to dramatically expand its power generation capacity.
Solar and storage grow, wind contracts
The growth in new solar capacity has been mirrored by growth in new storage capacity. In 2023, developers commissioned 7.9GW of new storage capacity, nearly double that brought online in 2022, and means that both solar and storage installed more capacity in 2023 than in the previous year. However, there was less new wind capacity added in 2023, with installations falling from 8.8GW to 6.4GW from one year to the next.
According to the US Energy Information Administration, wind was responsible for meeting 10% of the US electricity demand in 2023, down marginally from 10.2% the prior year. However, with concerns regarding high interest rates and bogged-down supply chains in the wind sector, investors could be turning their attention to other renewable projects, notably solar and storage.
The graph above demonstrates how, in recent years, the US has commissioned far more new solar projects than wind facilities. Meanwhile, storage projects have broken new ground, with the 300MW Moss Landing III and Desert Peak projects suggesting the US storage sector is entering a new era. Earlier this year, the Edwards & Sanborn solar-plus-storage project in California came online, and with 3.3GWh of storage capacity, this is the largest such project in the world.
The growth of solar and storage projects was particularly notable in the fourth quarter of 2023. Between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of last year, solar capacity installations increased from around 5GW to around 11GW, while storage capacity additions almost quadrupled to 4GW.
Solar pipeline promises growth
Perhaps most encouragingly for the solar sector is the vast number of solar projects currently in the development pipeline. The ACP divides utility-scale pipeline projects into those under “advanced development”, and those “under construction”, and solar projects account for more than half of all new renewable capacity in both divisions.
For projects in advanced development, there is 52.9GW of new solar capacity, more than double the next-largest renewable power source, offshore wind, which has 18.4GW of capacity in development. Regarding projects under construction, solar accounts for 41.4GW of new capacity, close to triple the 16.6GW of new wind capacity under development.
The ACP’s figures cover utility-scale projects and echo similarly encouraging reporting from other organisations, such as the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE), which announced last month that the US had installed a record 35.3GW of new solar capacity in 2023 across all solar sectors. The ACP also notes that, between the end of 2022 and 2023, the total size of the US clean power pipeline increased by 26%, and with solar driving much of this change, the sector will only continue to grow in importance in the future.
“It has been a banner year for storage and solar, and there is real excitement over the 123 newly announced manufacturing facilities that will bring economic development to communities across the country,” said ACP CEO Jason Grumet, who noted that, despite these developments, there remains work to do.
“But despite these achievements, we need to make even greater strides to meet our shared energy security and net zero goals.”