US renewables’ put in producing capability beats coal

Photo voltaic capability additions hit the bottom working in 2024, pushing renewables’ put in producing capability previous coal, in keeping with new US Federal Power Regulatory Fee (FERC) knowledge. 

FERC reviews in its newest “Power Infrastructure Replace,” with knowledge by way of January 31, 2024 (which was reviewed by the SUN DAY Marketing campaign) that photo voltaic accounted for two,527 megawatts (MW) of recent put in producing capability within the first month of this yr – or 87.3% of the entire. That’s the second-highest month-to-month complete ever reported for photo voltaic, behind solely December 2023, when 4,979 MW had been added.

The brand new photo voltaic capability reported for January was accompanied by 320 MW of recent wind capability, in addition to 44 MW of pure gasoline, 2 MW of oil, and three MW of “different.”

The brand new photo voltaic and wind introduced the entire accessible put in producing capability of renewable power sources (together with hydropower, biomass, and geothermal) as much as 376.33 gigawatts (GW) or 29.17% of all US producing capability. That’s greater than the put in capability of coal (207.15 GW).

Put in utility-scale photo voltaic capability (104.61 GW) alone now exceeds that of not solely nuclear energy (103.27 GW) but additionally hydropower (101.41 GW). And that doesn’t even embody the extra capability of small-scale, distributed photo voltaic – e.g., rooftop – which accounts for greater than 30% of all photo voltaic.

Furthermore, FERC forecasts that utility-scale photo voltaic capability must also exceed that of wind throughout the subsequent two to 3 years. Between February 2024 and January 2027, FERC anticipates web “excessive chance” additions of photo voltaic (ie, additions minus retirements) to complete 85,419 MW. Additional, there could also be as a lot as 218,646 MW of recent photo voltaic within the three-year pipeline.

FERC additionally expects 24,443 MW of web new wind additions plus 561 MW of web new hydropower and 400 MW of web new geothermal. The brand new Vogtle-4 nuclear reactor nearing completion in Georgia would add 1,100 MW.

Then again, put in capability of coal is forecast to plunge by 22,240 MW whereas that of pure gasoline and oil would fall by 3,131 MW and a couple of,051 MW, respectively. Biomass capability would additionally lower by 68 MW.

The web results of simply the web “excessive chance” additions is that by early 2027, photo voltaic would account for 13.83% of complete accessible put in producing capability whereas wind can be 12.79%. Taken collectively, all renewables would supply 35.45% of the entire – approaching pure gasoline (40.88%) and considerably surpassing coal (13.45%), nuclear energy (7.60%), and oil (2.48%) mixed. 

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