US adds 2.5GW of new wind in first half of 2024 as renewables surge
US adds 2.5GW of new wind in first half of 2024 as renewables surge | Windpower Monthly
The US added 2.5GW of new wind energy capacity in the first half of 2024, according to a new report from the country’s Energy Information Administration (EIA).
This was equivalent to 12% of total energy additions in the period. The largest new wind farms that came online were in Texas — the 309MW Canyon Wind and 266MW Goodnight projects.
Renewables overall dominated the new energy additions made in the first half of 2024, the EIA report showed, with solar leading the way.
New solar power additions totalled 12GW over the period, accounting for 59% of all new capacity. The two southern states of Texas and Florida alone were responsible for 38% of new solar over the period.
Meanwhile, new battery storage additions reached 4.2GW, 21% of the H1 total.
The EIA said that developers are planning to add an additional 42.6GW of new capacity in the second half of the year.
Nearly 60% of that planned capacity (25GW) is solar, followed by battery storage (10.8GW) and wind (4.6GW).
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.