While solar power is growing at an incredible rate, natural gas continues to outpace renewables in absolute terms for electricity generation. But that looks set to change in 2024, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) do the calculations in the first half of the year and found that wind, solar and batteries were being installed at a rate that dwarfed fresh natural gas generators. And that gap is expected to widen significantly before the year is out.
Solar power and batteries are booming
According to EIA data, about 20 gigawatts of fresh capacity was added in the first half of this year, with solar making up 60 percent of that. More than a third of the solar capacity was added in just two states: Texas and Florida. There were two projects that came online that had a capacity of more than 600 megawatts, one in Texas, the other in Nevada.
Now it’s time for batteries: The U.S. added 4.2 gigawatts of battery capacity during that period, more than 20 percent of the total fresh capacity. (Batteries are considered the equivalent of a generating source by the EIA because they can feed electricity into the grid on demand, even if they can’t do so continuously.) Texas and California alone accounted for more than 60 percent of those additions; add Arizona and Nevada, and you have 93 percent of the installed capacity.
The clear pattern is that batteries go where the sun is, allowing peak-day power to be used to meet demand after sunset. This will assist existing solar plants avoid having to curtail power production during periods of lower demand in spring and fall. In turn, it will improve the economics of installing additional solar in states where production can regularly exceed demand.
Wind, by contrast, has been operating at a more sedate pace, with just 2.5 GW of fresh capacity in the first six months of 2024. And for perhaps the last time this decade, additional nuclear capacity was added to the grid, with a fourth 1.1 GW reactor (and a second recently built) at the Vogtle facility in Georgia. The only other additions were from natural gas-fired facilities, but they totaled just 400 MW, or just 2 percent of the total fresh capacity.
EIA also projects capacity growth through the end of 2024 based on what’s already underway, and the general shape of things isn’t changing much. However, the pace of installations is picking up as developers rush to get their projects up and running in the current fiscal year. EIA expects just over 60 GW of fresh capacity to be installed by the end of the year, with 37 GW of that coming from solar. Battery growth continues at a breakneck pace, with 15 GW expected, or about a quarter of the total capacity additions this year.
Wind will account for 7.1 GW of fresh capacity, and natural gas for 2.6 GW. Add in the contribution of nuclear, and 96 percent of capacity additions in 2024 are expected to operate without carbon emissions. Even if you ignore battery additions, the fraction of added capacity emitting carbon remains remarkably compact, at just 6 percent.
Gradual changes in the grid
Of course, these figures represent peak production for these sources. Over the course of a year, solar generates about 25 percent of its rated capacity in the U.S., and wind generates about 35 percent. The former figure is likely to decline over time as solar becomes economical enough to make economic sense in places that don’t get as much sun. Wind’s capacity factor, on the other hand, could rise as more offshore wind farms are completed. In the case of natural gas, many newer plants are designed to operate intermittently so that they can provide power when renewables are under-produced.
A clearer picture of what’s happening can be gained by looking at the generating sources being retired. In the US, 5.1 GW of capacity went offline in the first half of 2024, and apart from 0.2 GW of “other,” all of that was fossil fuel, including 2.1 GW of coal and 2.7 GW of natural gas. The latter includes a huge 1.4 GW gas-fired plant in Massachusetts.