Renewables = 15% Of US Electricity In May

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Following our monthly electricity capacity report, here’s CleanTechnica‘s latest US electricity generation report, in which we add estimated rooftop solar generation to the EIA’s latest figures (released yesterday) and make it all much more consumable and useful for the average Joe or Jill (or Muhammad or Selena or whatever).

While renewables now account for 18% of US electricity generation capacity, they accounted for 15% of US electricity production in May according to this report.

Solar power accounted for 1.3% of electricity, wind for 5.3%, wood and wood-derived fuels for 1%, and hydro for 6.2%. It’s a similar story for the first 5 months of 2015 as a whole.

Of course, electricity production for the entire US comes from a massive fleet of power plants that changes slowly, but it’s still fun to look at how things are shifting. I think one of the best ways to look at that is to look at the YTD change from the year before to this year.

Looking at the change from January through May of 2014 to the same period in 2015, wind was down by 3,518 GWh (apparently not so windy in 2015), solar PV was up 5,500 GWh, nuclear was up 10,437 GWh, natural gas was up 75,327 GWh, petroleum liquids was down 1,651 GWh, and coal was down a whopping 104,197 GWh. Overall, electricity production was down 13,283 GWh.

For more, dive into the three charts and two tables below.

Recommended: Renewables = 98% Of New US Electricity Generation Capacity In June