Utility-Scale Wind and Solar in the U.S.: Comparative Trends in Deployment, Cost, Performance, Pricing, and Market Value

Utility-scale wind and solar are among the fastest-growing sources of generation in the U.S., having accounted for more than half of all new capacity added to U.S. grids over the past five years. As utility-scale solar becomes more competitive with wind, many companies (spanning the full length of the value chain) that formerly focused exclusively on wind have now branched out into solar (and storage) as well. As such, there is an increasing need for analysis and insights that are not confined to single technologies or markets, but that instead provide a more holistic view of the increasingly integrated renewable energy marketplace. For many years, Berkeley Lab has been a keen observer of both of these thriving—and converging—markets. Our annual utility-scale wind and solar data products—now in their 14th and 8th years, respectively—draw upon an unparalleled wealth of empirical project-level data to uncover key trends and developments in utility-scale wind and solar deployment, technology, cost, performance, PPA pricing, LCOE, and wholesale market value, before concluding with a look ahead. This webinar will bring together the most important trends and insights from each report and present them in a comparative fashion.