US Solar Keeps Surging, Generating More Power Than Hydro In 2025

In early 2025, U.S. solar power production jumped 44% compared to the previous year, driven by end-of-year construction to capture tax incentives and long-term cost advantages. "The bad news is that, in contrast to China, solar's growth hasn't been enough to offset rising demand," notes Ars Technica. "Instead, the US also saw significant growth in coal use, which rose by 23 percent compared to the year prior, after years of steady decline." From the report: Short-term fluctuations in demand are normal, generally driven by weather-induced demand for heating or cooling. Despite those changes, demand for electricity in the US has been largely flat for over a decade, largely thanks to gains in efficiency. But 2024 saw demand go up by nearly 3 percent, and the first quarter of 2025 saw another rise, this time of nearly 5 percent. It's a bit too early to say that we're seeing a shift to a period of rising demand, but one has been predicted for some time due to rising data center use and the increased electrification of transportation and appliances.

Under those circumstances, the rest of the difference will be made up for with fossil fuels. Running counter to recent trends, the use of natural gas dropped during the first three months of 2025. This means that the use of coal rose nearly as quickly as demand, up by 23 percent compared to the same time period in 2024. Despite the rise in coal use, the fraction of carbon-free electricity held steady year over year, with wind/solar/hydro/nuclear accounting for 43 percent of all power put on the US grid. That occurred despite small drops in nuclear and hydro production.

Can anyone say LLMs?

[evanh]

It's not just going from flat demand to a rising demand, it's an accelerating rise too.

Ridiculous amounts of money have poured into LLMs and the resulting server farms are stupid amounts of power needs. It makes Trump's election look sane.

Re:

[blue trane]

How about throwing the poor into furnaces to power AI?

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

Genius!

Re:

[blue trane]

Are you being sold a tall tale of scarcity when statistica says: "The United States' energy production reached an estimated 104.38 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2024, while consumption amounted to approximately 93.51"?

Even if consumption is blippling slightly upward back towards 2007 levels, why aren't you also saying that production is well above consumption even without needing more coal?

Re:

[rossdee]

Why are you measuring electrical energy in BTU

Whats wrong with Joules or Terawatt hours ?

Re:

[blue trane]

Why are you distracting from the fact that energy consumption is far exceeded by production in the US, so all this scarcity hype is but a mood affiliation?

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

Those are freedom hating commie units. Even Terawatt hours, which is just a freedom hating commie unit dressed up as a blessed freedom unit.

BTU

[will4]

Keep on using BTUs and other less frequent units of measure.

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Without context, that production figure doesn't mean much. How much of that energy lost was due to transmission or grid overload scenarios where power had to be burned off with resistive heaters? You're also ignoring the baseline costs associated with producing that excess energy. There's still scarcity involved even if someone overprovisioned and then failed to transmit to a grid that had demand in a timely fashion.

Re:

[Moryath]

You're right. Trump supporters are deranged animals.

Re:

[phantomfive]

Don't data centers have 24 hour round the clock power requirements?

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Not necessarily. Fixed costs are still high enough to keep energy prices within an order of magnitude of what you pay for residential power.

Trade deficits

[algaeman]

Can we ship Sam Altman to China, where he can fool them into wasting huge amounts of electricity on androids dreaming of electric sheep?

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

China's coal use is going down while America's is increasing 23%

Re:

[Barsteward]

They use the new plants as peaker plants not as 24/7 polluters plus it looks like their polluting ways have peaked

Coming to an end

[battingly]

With the GOP budget bill canceling solar tax credits, the rise in solar production is about to come to a screeching halt.

Re:Coming to an end

[Anonymous Coward]

Sunlight causes cancer. They don't want me telling you that, but look it up. It's like the wind. Beautiful wind. But you can't replace coal because they kill birds and cause cancer. Even when the sun isn't out. The solar causes cancer and they want your taxes to pay for it. Not any more. I know Elom likes the electric but you can get it from coal.We are getting it from coal right now. Like George Washington. What's this? Sign here? No more tax dollars for sun cancer. This is good, isn't it? No president in history has done more to stop the solar than me. No you're wrong, it kills birds. Like the blades, but its a death ray aimed at birds. I've seen it landing in Vegas. Maybe that place will go out of business and we'll build a new casino.

Re:

[battingly]

Applause.

Re:

[Kernel Kurtz]

That's remarkably good. Did you ad-lib it or is it an actual quote?

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

I think it's an amazingly good adlib.

Re:

[TheMiddleRoad]

You are fucking good at that. I'd vote for you!

Re:

[backslashdot]

They built a secret artificial sun in Vegas. I’ve seen it myself, it's huge, and they hid it behind the Venetian.

Re:

[thegarbz]

Sunlight causes cancer.

I see potential in this. Maybe we can convince the medical industrial complex to promote solar as it will give them a needed boost in revenue.

Re:

[mamba-mamba]

You are right except, since the tax credit is still available through this calendar year, you can be sure there will be a flurry of activity between now and end of year. This should be a banner year for solar suppliers (which includes not just the panels, but the racks, batteries, inverters, optimizers, etc., etc).

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Maybe, maybe not. If solar producers are as cost-competitive as they claim (and if sodium batteries or something better proliferates), they shouldn't have any problem continuing some momentum.

Re:

[ctilsie242]

It may not though. Solar has a lot of advantages, one of them is the idiot-proof-ness, and ease of maintenance. Almost no moving parts except for cooling fans, and maybe axis motors. Because of this, if a field has solar panels slung out there, the only real hazard is hail, maybe dusting the panels off every so often.

Solar has fallen below nuclear in deaths per TWh, especially with how integrated charge controllers have become. Even without grants, solar has its uses, even if it is just used to slightly

Re:

[NotEmmanuelGoldstein]

... a screeching halt.

China continues building more solar, wind and nuclear: That means; better infrastructure, more factories and much, much cheaper products. Even if the US slave labour mandate (from the current bill in Congress) makes US wages equal to China: The USA will soon be too expensive, all over again. The result will be, the rest of the world choosing climate-friendly China over petro-dollar-friendly USA. Meantime, the USA loses its workforce to increased pollution, workplace accidents, epidemics and infection,

Maybe, but it's hard to stop

[Casandro]

I mean in Germany those tax credits are now only at around 20%, essentially you don't have to pay VAT... which is just relevant for private installations. This is within the margin of error of your economic calculations. The times when you could actually sell solar power for 20 cents per kWh or more are long gone.

At least in Germany, solar is currently the most economic way to produce power, even with storage factored in. Of course in the US there are different environments which may make nuclear a semi-fea