Dive Brief:
- Utility-scale solar in the U.S. “soared” in the third quarter this year, with developers connecting 4.1 GW of capacity to the grid, a 107% increase from the same quarter last year, according to a Monday report from S&P Global Market Intelligence.
- 1.9 GW of solar capacity was added in Q3 2022. The firm said the year-over-year increase is a “sign of resurgence of an industry battered by inflation and supply chain constraints.”
- In addition, despite facing those challenges last year, the U.S. installed the second-largest amount of solar worldwide in 2022, according to a Monday report from Mercom Capital Group.
Dive Insight:
The two largest projects completed in the third quarter and connected to the grid were both 500 MW — an Enel Group project in Texas, and a NextEra project in Nevada, according to S&P Global.
S&P Global also noted an ongoing “scramble among developers” to secure positions for their projects in interconnection queues, caused in part by the massive financial incentives for clean energy included in the Inflation Reduction Act.
“As of the end of the quarter, the five-year pipeline for new solar energy projects was nearly 204 GW,” the report said.
So far this year, 10.3 GW of solar capacity has been connected to the grid – a 36% increase from the 7.5 GW connected in the first three quarters of 2022, said S&P Global.
However, new project announcements slowed from the second quarter. In the third quarter, developers in the U.S. only announced six new utility-scale solar projects totaling an estimated 241 MW of capacity – “far less” than the 1,240 MW of new projects announced the previous quarter, according to the report.
Mercom’s report found that 2022 was a “banner year” for solar installations globally, with 191 GW installed worldwide, a 22.1% increase from the previous year.
While China led the pack with 86 GW of installations, the U.S. came in second with 17.6 GW – an 8.3% decline compared to the 19 GW the U.S. brought online in 2021.
The report attributed this decline “to module supply uncertainty” caused by a Department of Commerce investigation into solar panel tariff circumvention, along with shipments of modules being held at the border as a result of the Uyghur Forced Labor Protection Act.
Worldwide, the top ten developers “accounted for nearly 145 GW of operational, under-construction, and awarded (contracted) solar projects” in 2022, Mercom said. Those developers — which include TotalEnergies, Enel, Brookfield, and AES — acquired a total of 5.8 GW of large-scale solar projects throughout the year, and divested a total of 2.4 GW.
