More than 7.5 gigawatts of new power capacity went online in the third quarter of 2024 and most (90%) of this capacity was renewable. Seventy-four percent of new capacity was from solar generation, with 4 gigawatts of large-scale solar and 1.7 gigawatts of distributed solar. Wind energy buildout contributed 1.2 gigawatts, while fossil gas grew by 775 megawatts.
In the chart below, we illustrate the past two years of electric power capacity additions in the U.S., disaggregated by energy source on a quarterly basis.
Key takeaways:
- 74 percent of all new capacity installed in the third quarter of 2024 was solar; 52 percent from utility-scale solar farms and 22 percent from small solar installations (residential, commercial, and community solar).
- Distributed solar buildout ticked up again in the third quarter, after a slow down in the first half of the year.
- Only 775 megawatts of new gas-fired power generation capacity came online in the third quarter. While this was more gas-fired capacity than was added in any other quarter this year, it is still less than 10 percent of the gas-fired capacity that was added in 2023.
- Developers installed nearly two gigawatts of utility-scale energy storage in the third quarter of 2024.
For more on the advancement of clean, distributed energy, see these recent ILSR resources:
- Community Solar Tracker
- Community Leaders on the Benefits of Locally Owned Clean Energy
- What the Monopoly Utility Model Really Costs Us
- Upcharge: Hidden Costs of Electric Utility Monopoly Power
- The 2024 Community Power Scorecard
- The State(s) of Distributed Solar — 2023 Update
- Monopoly Utilities Shakedown Regulators in the Southwest – Episode 224 of Local Energy Rules
Interested in earlier trends and analysis of new power plant capacity? Check out our archive, illustrating how electricity generation has changed in previous quarters and years.
This article originally posted at ilsr.org. For timely updates from the Energy Democracy Initiative, follow John Farrell on Twitter or Bluesky, and subscribe to the Energy Democracy weekly update.
Featured Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)