US utility-scale solar falls 30% to 4.4 GW in Q1

The United States installed 4.4 GW of utility-scale solar and a record 1.6 GW of grid-scale energy storage in the first three months of 2025, according to the American Clean Power Association. Solar installations declined about 30% from the previous quarter.

From pv magazine USA

The United States installed 7.4 GW of utility-scale solar, wind and energy storage in the first quarter of 2025, falling just short of the record 8.1 GW installed in the first three months of 2024, according to a new quarterly market report from the American Clean Power Association (ACP).

Solar led the way for clean energy installations with 4.4 GW added in the first quarter, followed by energy storage with a quarterly record of 1.6 GW and wind with 1.3 GW.

The 4.4 GW of solar added in-quarter was 30% lower than the record first three months of 2024. Florida led the states for first-quarter installations in 2025, adding 894 MW of new capacity, or just over 20% of all grid-scale solar added in the period.

The 435 MW Dunns Bridge Solar II in Starke County, Indiana, owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company and developed by NextEra Energy Resources, was the largest solar project to begin commercial operations during the quarter. The project is paired with a 56 MW/225 MWh battery storage system and delivers power to NIPSCO’s customers in northern Indiana.

Grid-scale battery energy storage is undergoing an installation boom, with total capacity climbing 65% year-over-year, said the report.

The two largest battery storage projects to come online in the first quarter were NextEra Energy Resources’ Silver State South Storage in Nevada and AES Indiana’s Pike County Energy Storage in Indiana. Both projects had a 200 MW capacity with four-hour duration design, said ACP.

To date, the US market has a cumulative 156 GW of grid-scale wind power, 134 GW of utility-scale solar and 30.6 GW / 83 GWh of battery energy storage. In total, the United States has 321 GW of clean power capacity in operation, or enough to power 80 million homes, said ACP.

Looking ahead, the project pipeline for clean power continues to grow. More than 184 GW of solar, wind and storage are in development, increasing 12% year over year. The steady growth of the pipeline in recent years can be primarily attributed to battery storage and solar, which have expanded by 35 GW and 21 GW since the first quarter of 2022, respectively, said ACP.

“Clean power is shovel-ready at scale. With unprecedented demand growth for electricity, we must send consistent investment signals across the energy sector,” said ACP CEO Jason Grumet. “We have the technology, investment capital, and workforce required to build the $300 billion-plus of clean energy projects in our development pipeline. The greatest threat to a reliable energy system is an unreliable political system.”

ACP said the industry’s growth is particularly strong in Republican-leaning states, where domestic manufacturing and energy production has created nearly 650,000 direct and indirect jobs and generates $3.4 billion in annual tax revenue and payments to landowners in rural communities.

However, a Republican-led House of Representatives has passed a budget reconciliation bill that the Solar Energy Industries Association labeled as “unworkable legislation.”

Uncertainty related to the fate of tax credits has already led to an estimated $14 billion in cancelled clean energy projects and factories in 2025 alone.

Among other changes, the proposed “Big, Beautiful Bill” would eliminate the clean energy investment tax credit and production tax credit five years ahead of schedule in 2028. The bill next faces the Senate for a vote.