Renewables Account For 18% Of US Electricity Generation

The United States Energy Information Administration has recently published data revealing that renewable energy sources provided nearly 18% of the country’s electrical generation through the first nine months of the year, while solar and wind grew substantially as compared to the same nine months a year ago.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) published its “Electric Power Monthly” (with data up through September 30, 2018) this week, which was then analyzed by the SUN DAY Campaign run by Ken Bossong, which pays close attention to the EIA’s regular energy reports. According to SUN DAY’s analysis of EIA numbers, renewable energy sources — which include biomass, geothermal, hydropower, solar, and wind — accounted for 17.8% of the country’s net domestic electrical generation through the first three-quarters of 2018.

Interestingly, this was a marginal increase on the 17.6% recorded through the first nine months of 2017, despite the fact that hydropower generation dropped by 5.1%.

Through the same period, EIA’s data shows that solar and wind both saw strong growth, with utility-scale solar growing by 30.3% (which includes distributed small-scale solar) and wind energy growing by 14.5% compared to the same period a year earlier. Taken together, wind and solar accounted for almost 9% of the country’s electrical generation and 49.7% of the total from all renewable energy sources.

Looking at all renewable energy technologies, hydropower remains the consistent leader, accounting for 7.05% of the nation’s total electricity generation, followed by wind with 6.41%, solar with 2.42%, biomass with 1.48% after a 1.5% increase in generation, and geothermal with 0.39% after a 5.4% increase.