Renewable Energy = 98% of New Electricity Generation Capacity in February (US)

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Continuing a trend that any regular readers of CleanTechnica have seen very clearly, renewable energy sources dominated new electricity generation capacity additions in the United States in February 2015.

It was actually a quite weak month for utility-scale installations of any sort, which left my estimate of rooftop solar power to take 73% of the pie.

With such a big portion of the pie, an unofficial estimate like this should be taken as such. However, the estimate is based on annual projections from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) that have proven as solid as anything else out there.

If you just looked at the utility-scale side of the equation, renewables still would have accounted for >94% of new electricity generation capacity, with geothermal accounting for 52%, wind 24%, and solar 18%. Natural gas just added 5 megawatts of capacity in February according to FERC.

Looking at January and February together (including my estimates for non-utility-scale solar), renewables = 89% of all new capacity, and natural gas 11%.

Looking at all installed electricity generation capacity on the grid at the end of February, renewables = 17.5%, with 8.5% of that coming from hydropower, 5.6% from wind, 1.6% from solar, 1.4% from biomass, 0.3% from geothermal, and 0.1% from waste heat. We still have a long way to go.

US Renewable Energy Capacity - Feb 2015

Check out more US electricity capacity reports here, and US electricity generation reports here.


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Zachary Shahan

Zach is tryin' to help society help itself one word at a time. He spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as its director, chief editor, and CEO. Zach is recognized globally as an electric vehicle, solar energy, and energy storage expert. He has presented about cleantech at conferences in India, the UAE, Ukraine, Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada, and Curaçao. Zach has long-term investments in Tesla [TSLA], NIO [NIO], Xpeng [XPEV], Ford [F], ChargePoint [CHPT], Amazon [AMZN], Piedmont Lithium [PLL], Lithium Americas [LAC], Albemarle Corporation [ALB], Nouveau Monde Graphite [NMGRF], Talon Metals [TLOFF], Arclight Clean Transition Corp [ACTC], and Starbucks [SBUX]. But he does not offer (explicitly or implicitly) investment advice of any sort.

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