Second fiddle no more: US grid solar to generate more power than wind later this year - report

US grid-scale solar will produce more electricity than wind for the first time in the third quarter, one year before it will become the renewable energy installed generating capacity leader, according to the Department of Energy (DoE).

The forecast by Energy Information Administration (EIA), DOE’s statistical arm, is in line with market expectations that solar will overtake wind as an electric power supplier in the foreseeable future and greatly extend its lead next decade.

Wind has been the leading renewable energy producer since the sector began gaining scale nationwide in the early 2000s. A key impetus was the federal production tax credit that Congress passed in 1992.

In recent years, utility solar installations have more than tripled those for wind, which has struggled on multiple fronts. These include permitting and grid interconnection issues, and insufficient long-haul transmission capacity necessary to unlock the country’s best interior resource.

Offshore wind, given policy priority along with solar by the previous administration, faces development hurdles from a hostile President Donald Trump and is unlikely to be a meaningful energy contributor this decade.

This would occur even with solar having 142.4GW of installed utility-scale capacity versus 157.7GW for wind.

Wind will then continue to produce more electricity than solar most quarters, albeit the advantage will narrow, until third quarter 2026 when it will again lag solar, according to EIA.

That is when installed utility solar generating capacity will surpass wind – 169.2GW versus 165.5GW. The report forecasts solar at the end of 2026 with 180.5GW in place compared with 171.8GW of wind.

Also helping utility solar is battery storage which EIA forecasts will more than double from 26GW capacity in 2024 to 60.7GW at the end of 2026.

The great majority of US hybrid renewables projects employ 2-4 hour duration battery storage to firm solar, which is more available than wind during peak hours in certain high demand locations such as Texas.