The quarterly Big Impact of Small Solar series aims to show just how much distributed, small-scale (community, residential, and commercial) solar is contributing to new power capacity additions in the United States. Local, small solar and storage projects, when added together, can have a big impact on the energy transition!
Key takeaways:
- Solar continues to be the dominant source of new electricity capacity in the U.S., with 87 percent of new capacity in Q1 from large and small solar.
- Distributed solar kept up its relatively steady pace, with over 1.6 gigawatts of new capacity this quarter.
- Over 1.1 gigawatt-hours of distributed storage was added in Q1.
The chart below illustrates the past two years of electric power capacity additions in the U.S., disaggregated by energy source, quarterly.
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Featured Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)