Solar PV accounted for almost all of the new US electricity generation capacity added in November 2024, and dominated additions from January through November.
Figures published last week (23 January) by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) show that the US added 4,132MW of new solar PV capacity in November across 72 individual projects.
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Just 4,193MW of new capacity was added across all generation technologies, with 48MW of natural gas and 13MW of coal capacity supplementing the solar PV additions.
PV’s dominance is reflected across the year, too. FERC’s data shows that of the 31,732MW of new production capacity added from January-November 2024, 25,817MW was solar PV capacity.
This compares with 13,829MW of solar PV which was added in the same period of 2023 out of a total addition of 29,340MW across all technologies. Proportionally, 2024 saw a marked increase in solar PV compared with other renewables and fossil fuel generation types.
In total, FERC finds that the US has 125.53GW of installed solar generation capacity which represents 9.61% of total US power production. Natural gas is by far the leading technology across the US with 565.01GW, or 43.25%, of installed capacity. Coal capacity is second (15.44%), followed by wind power (11.74%) and then solar PV.
Through October 2027, FERC expects solar PV to continue to dominate new US capacity additions; it identified 93,003MW of “high probability” capacity and 211,689MW of total possible additions over the next two and a half years. The “high probability” and total capacity scenarios identify 134,108MW and 318,523MW of total additions across all energy generation technologies.
FERC’s full update can be found here.
The executive orders passed by president Donald Trump on his first day in office have introduced a level of uncertainty to the US solar market. One in particular, entitled “Unleashing American Energy”, announced a pause on the disbursement of funds under the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which has been a major driver of US clean energy capacity additions over the last two years. Read more on this here.
