The U.S. clean energy sector shattered records in 2025, commissioning 50,344 MW of new utility-scale capacity, marking the first time annual installations have ever surpassed 50 GW.
According to the American Clean Power Association’s (ACP) Q4 2025 Clean Power Quarterly Market Report, these technologies accounted for over 90% of all new power capacity added to the domestic grid this year.
The figure marks a 3% increase over the previous year. Together, solar and storage have become the primary engines of the American energy transition, effectively carrying the grid as other sectors face deployment bottlenecks.
The energy storage industry saw its strongest deployment year on record in 2025, adding 16,175 MW / 46,520 MWh of new capacity. This represents a staggering 41% increase over the previous record set in 2024.
Storage is no longer a niche addition; it accounted for 29% of all new capacity installed across the U.S. grid in 2025. The technology’s growth is even more apparent in the development pipeline, where storage has increased by an average of 10% every quarter for the past two years.
By the end of 2025, the battery storage pipeline stood at over 46 GW, more than 1.5 times its size at the end of 2023.
Utility-scale solar remains the largest single contributor to the U.S. energy mix, delivering nearly half (49%) of all new power capacity in 2025. Developers brought online 27,225 MW of solar throughout the year, with a massive 10.1 GW surge in the fourth quarter alone.
The scale of solar’s reach is now nationwide, with the ACP reporting that every single U.S. state now has at least 1 MW of solar capacity either under construction or in advanced development.
Texas, Arizona, and California continue to lead the solar and storage state markets. Texas alone has 10.9 GW of solar and 5.6 GW of storage currently under construction, followed closely by Arizona’s 4.1 GW / 4.6 GW split.
Despite the record-breaking installations, a significant “warning light” has emerged in the data. Clean power procurement fell by 36% in 2025 compared to 2024.Power purchase agreement (PPA) announcements saw the steepest drop, falling from 45.4 GW to just 33 GW. The 27% decline in PPAs signals that while projects are being finished today, new projects are not being signed at the same rate.
The report attributes this slowdown to “policy uncertainty and fluctuating tariffs,” which have made project costs difficult to predict and contract negotiations more complex. Industry experts warn that this drop in offtake could result in lower deployment volumes toward the end of the decade.
While the pipeline grew by a modest 1% in Q4 to reach 187,514 MW, the growth rate has flattened compared to the 5% quarterly average seen between 2021 and 2024.
- Kentucky: The state emerged as a surprising solar leader, landing in the Top 10 for 2025 solar installations.
- Nevada: Hosted one of the quarter’s largest hybrid projects, the Winston Energy project, which includes a 400 MW solar phase paired with a 400 MW/1,600 MWh battery.
- Virginia: Maintained the top spot for offshore wind construction, despite that sector’s overall pipeline contracting by 4% quarterly over the last two years.
The 2025 data confirms that solar and storage are the default choice for new U.S. power generation. However, the 36% drop in overall procurement serves as a reminder that the industry remains sensitive to the federal policy environment. For the 50 GW record to become the new baseline, the industry will need a return to the policy stability that fueled its recent rise.
2025 Clean Power Snapshot:
- Total Capacity Online: 363,301 MW
- Solar Added: 27,225 MW
- Storage Added: 16,175 MW / 46,520 MWh
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.