In SACE’s latest edition of our “Solar in the Southeast” report series, you can read up on how solar growth is accelerating or lagging in Southeast utilities and states. The Southeast has a cumulative of nearly 28 gigawatts (GW) of solar (27,840 megawatts, MW) in 2024, with 5 GW of capacity coming online in 2024 alone. The vast majority of that solar is utility-scale, or large solar farms owned by or contracted to electric utilities. The Southeast is projected to nearly double the amount of solar in the region to almost 54 GW in 2030. The report also details how key factors in the electric power sector, such as affordability, recent load growth, growing interest in batteries, and utility resource planning, help inform and grow solar in the Southeast.
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How do we measure solar for different states and utilities?
We start by looking at the overall amount of solar measured in megawatts (MW) of capacity that is operating or planned to produce power for a given state or utility. Solar can be added to the grid by electric utilities, independent power producers, and consumers. Larger solar projects are called utility-scale solar, and they are typically owned by the electric utility or a non-utility developer who sells the solar power output to utilities. Each electric utility files an integrated resource plan (IRP), and each IRP can be an opportunity to add more solar to the grid by an electric utility proposing to build its own solar projects, or by going into a procurement process to buy a solar project’s output over the long term (usually a 20–30-year period). Distributed solar is made up of smaller solar systems that are typically installed on the rooftops of residential or commercial customers. Distributed solar can be attributed to a utility through a variety of different methods, such as net-metered solar, virtual solar, and tariffed solar, which are included in all of our figures.
By looking at the cumulative solar capacity in each year, we can see how solar has grown in the Southeast over time. Overall, the Southeast can claim nearly a cumulative 28 gigawatts (GW) of solar (27,840 megawatts, MW) in 2024, with 5 GW of capacity coming online in 2024 alone. The vast majority of that solar is utility-scale, or large solar farms owned by or contracted to electric utilities. This illustrates the overall amount of solar power that is sourced to a utility or state, which accounts for multi-state utilities or electric cooperatives that may share the output from a solar project among different states or utilities. With 5 MW of solar capacity coming online in the region in 2024 alone and expected to keep pace in the future, the Southeast is projected to more than double the amount of solar in the region to almost 56 GW in 2030.
Solar at scale – which utilities contribute the most to total solar capacity?
Together, major systems such as Duke Energy, Southern Company, Dominion Energy South Carolina, TVA, and FPL account for about three-quarters of the Southeast’s total load — and a similar share of its solar capacity. Numerous groups of individual and regional municipal power agencies, as well as Electric Membership Cooperatives (EMCs), are grouped into the “other utilities” category.
As of 2024, Florida Power and Light (FPL) is the leader on solar in the region. FPL has roughly the same amount of solar as Duke Energy’s three utilities in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida combined. The next largest utility group was Southern Company, which consists of Georgia Power, Alabama Power, and Mississippi Power. Despite being the largest utility in the region, TVA has significantly less solar than the other large utilities in the region. The decisions that these large utility systems make now will define how bright the region’s solar future truly becomes.
Utilities in the Southeast are deploying more solar over shorter time frames
The Southeast is projected to more than double the amount of solar in the region to almost 54 GW in 2030 based on current resource plans. In general, utilities across the Southeast have made larger capacity deployments in shorter time frames than previous years. As an example, Florida Power & Light deployed approximately a gigawatt of solar capacity in 2023.
But some utilities still have a lot of catching up to do. One point of comparison is between TVA and FPL. The two utilities are similar in size, with TVA reporting 158,350 GWh of retail sales in 2024 compared to FPL’s 129,416 GWh. Yet, FPL has demonstrated sustained deployment of solar over the past three years, an average of 1,585 MW per year for the past three years, as opposed to an average of 285 MW / year for TVA. Despite being a larger utility, TVA has overall been much slower to deploy solar. There is a silver lining as TVA is showing some long-overdue progress on solar. The federal utility is contracted to receive solar from several large solar projects in the coming years as a result of previously signed power purchase agreements, thus rising to an average of 735 MW / year for the next three years if these projects come online as planned. The utility has also announced goals to build more beyond that, but with leadership changes and the TVA Board of Directors in limbo, it is uncertain whether that solar goal will come to fruition.
What’s next?
Utilities across the region are forecasting significant demand for the first time in over a decade. With affordability top of mind as utilities forecast load growth, it is more important than ever for utilities to utilize the least-cost option, solar. Despite rollbacks of tax credits, solar remains cost-competitive as costs associated with fossil fuel infrastructure trend upward. Since fuel costs are passed directly on to customers, solar is a low-cost way to stabilize customer utility bills by reducing their exposure to spikes in coal and gas prices.
There is little as reliable on planet Earth as the fact that the sun is going to rise each morning and set each day. Although solar’s critics are quick to point out that the sun doesn’t shine all the time, one tool that many utilities are using to complement solar on the grid is storing excess electricity in batteries and deploying that electricity when it is needed. Operating an electric grid with solar is different, but not less reliable, than operating a grid with fossil fuels that must be transported via pipelines or rail. Each utility resource plan is an opportunity to add more solar to the grid, especially if it is paired with battery storage.
