In Q2, solar accounted for 61% of the additional capacity added, with 95 projects put into service. 27 of the 95 projects have a capacity of 100 MW or more. The biggest in-quarter project was Repsol’s 500 MW Frye Solar in Texas. According to ACP, Texas has overtaken California as the state with the most utility-scale solar capacity in the country for the first time. With 1,656 MW added this quarter, Texas’s total operational solar power capacity is already close to 22 GW.
Utility-scale energy storage is deployed with a capacity of over 21.6 GW, and it is expanding quickly. By 2020, the country had scarcely installed its first gigawatt of storage capacity, and ever since then, the industry has continued to grow. There are a ton of clean electricity projects in the works. Nearly 163 GW of projects were proposed, an increase of 13% over the previous year. According to ACP, the pipeline’s consistent growth is mostly due to solar and energy storage, which have increased at average rates of 3% and 12% per quarter since Q2 2022. For US-based producers of clean energy, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 offers substantial advantages. The increase in domestic manufacturing is the result of it.
There have been more than 160 announced new or expanded manufacturing facilities since the IRA’s passage through the quarter. According to the research, these facilities are expected to generate over 100,000 additional manufacturing jobs. As of Q2 2024, 42 facilities—or more than 20,000 additional jobs—had been built or expanded out of the total announcements, according to ACP.