According to an American Clean Power Association report, the United States also installed a record 1.6 GW of grid-scale energy storage in the first quarter of 2025.
According to a quarterly market analysis from the American Clean Power Association (ACP), the United States built 7.4 GW of utility-scale solar, wind, and energy storage in Q1, 2025, which was just less than the record 8.1 GW deployed in the first quarter of 2024.
Compared to the record first quarter in 2024, the 4.4 GW of solar added during the period was 30% less. With 894 MW of new capacity added, or slightly more than 20% of all grid-scale solar added in the quarter, Florida lead the states in 2025 for Q1 installations.
With 4.4 GW installed in Q1, solar topped the list of renewable energy installations. Energy storage came in second with 1.6 GW, and wind came in third with 1.3 GW.
The largest solar project to start commercial operations during the quarter was the 435 MW Dunns Bridge Solar II in Starke County, Indiana, which was produced by NextEra Energy Resources and owned by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company. The project supplies electricity to NIPSCO’s clients in northern Indiana and is coupled with a 56 MW/225 MWh battery storage system.
According to the research, grid-scale battery energy storage is seeing a boom in installations, with total capacity increasing by 65% annually.
The two biggest battery storage projects that went live in the first quarter were AES Indiana’s Pike County Energy Storage in Indiana and NextEra Energy Resources’ Silver State South Storage in Nevada. ACP said that both installations could handle 200 MW of power and were designed to last four hours.
As of right now, the United States has 30.6 GW/83 GWh of battery energy storage, 136 GW of utility-scale solar, and 156 GW of grid-scale wind generation. According to ACP, there are already 321 GW of operational clean electricity capacity in the United States, which is sufficient to power 80 million homes.
Looking ahead, the renewable power project pipeline is expanding. There are currently approximately 184 GW of solar, wind, and storage projects under development, a 12% increase from the previous year. According to ACP, solar and battery storage have grown by 35 GW and 21 GW since Q1 2022, respectively, and are largely responsible for the pipeline’s current steady expansion.
“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 chief executive officer Jason Grumet. “We have the technology, investment capital, and workforce required to build the $300+ billion of clean energy projects in our development pipeline. The greatest threat to a reliable energy system is an unreliable political system.”
In Republican-leaning states, where domestic manufacturing and energy production have produced about 650,000 direct and indirect employment and provide $3.4 billion in annual tax income and payments to landowners in rural communities, the industry’s expansion is especially robust, according to ACP.
The Solar Energy Industries Association, however, called the budget reconciliation plan passed by the Republican-led House of Representatives “unworkable legislation.”
In 2025 alone, an estimated $14 billion worth of clean energy projects and companies were cancelled due to uncertainty around the future of tax incentives.
The proposed “Big, Beautiful Bill” would, among other things, do away with the production tax credit and clean energy investment tax credit five years early in 2028. The Senate will then vote on the bill.
