General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWind, solar provide 67% of new US electrical generating capacity in first half of 2022
Clean energy accounted for more than two-thirds of the new US electrical generating capacity added during the first six months of 2022, according to data recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Wind (5,722 megawatts) and solar (3,895 MW) provided 67.01% of the 14,352 MW in utility-scale (that is, greater than 1 MW) capacity that came online during the first half of 2022.
Additional capacity was provided by geothermal (26 MW), hydropower (7 MW), and biomass (2 MW). The balance came from natural gas (4,695 MW) and oil (5 MW). No new capacity was reported for 2022 from either nuclear power or coal. This brings clean energys share of total US available installed generating capacity up to 26.74%. To put that in perspective, five years ago, clean energys share was 19.7%. Ten years ago, it was 14.76%. FERC reports that there may be as much as 192,507 MW of new solar capacity on the way, with 66,315 MW classified as high-probability additions and no offsetting retirements.
The high-probability additions alone would nearly double utility-scale solars current installed capacity of 74,530 MW, while successful completion of all expected projects would nearly quadruple it. Notably, FERCs forecast predates President Joe Biden signing into law the Inflation Reduction Act, and that will likely ramp up solar growth even more. In addition, new wind capacity by June 2025 could total 70,393 MW, with 17,383 MW being high probability and only 158 MW of retirements expected. Thus, installed wind capacity could grow by at least 12%.
https://electrek.co/2022/08/15/wind-solar-provide-67-of-new-us-electrical-generating-capacity-in-first-half-of-2022/
cilla4progress
(24,736 posts)Murka got its "MOJOE" back?
See what I did there??!!
PatSeg
(47,472 posts)BlueGreenLady
(2,824 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,660 posts)Bayard
(22,075 posts)bif
(22,708 posts)Irish_Dem
(47,108 posts)Emile
(22,771 posts)Irish_Dem
(47,108 posts)So we are making progress, albeit slow progress.
modrepub
(3,495 posts)You need to check your local/regional grid operator to see what the actual electricity production mix is at any given moment.
For my area that's PJM Interconnection: [link:https://pjm.com|
As of 11 AM 16 August 2022, it looks like "renewables" make up a little under 5% of actual electricity production. Natural gas and coal are about 42% and 22% respectively. Nuclear is around 31%.
Most new generation projects in PJM are natural gas, solar and wind. [link:https://www.pjm.com/planning/services-requests/interconnection-queues|
Torchlight
(3,341 posts)Seeing these numbers kinda explain to me why so many not-quite-professionals-in-the-field were crowing about 'windmill cancer clusters' some years back... I think they realized their time is coming to an end and wanted to go down with a mud-fight.
ripcord
(5,404 posts)Mr. Sparkle
(2,933 posts)The war in Ukraine have made matters alot worse. Ironically, it is the expansion of wind and solar that will help bring the cost down because they are made to compete with cheap NG and oil.