The U.S. Geological Survey/Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory has recently published an updated version of its large-scale solar project database. For the purposes of this exercise large-scale is any front-of-the-meter ground mount system of 1 megawatt or more. The database does not include anything installed this year.
It’s arguable whether 1 MW is the correct threshold to define a large-scale system. There are lots of rooftop systems of 1 MW or more and I wouldn’t necessarily categorize them as large-scale. Nonetheless, the database is the database.
As of 2022 a total of 3,699 systems have been installed totaling 55.16 gigawatts of power. That equates to an average system size of 14.9 MW.
I was curious as to the annual distribution of solar projects by system size, so I dug a bit deeper into the data. As you would expect, between 2011 and 2015 the average number of projects installed increased steadily from 101 in 2011 to 317 in 2015. The average system size increased from 5.8 MW in 2011 to 11.8 MW in 2015.
Starting in 2016 the numbers jump to another level. The average number of systems installed per year was above 400 each year from 2016 to 2020. And by 2020, the average system size had almost doubled to 21.4 MW.
But 2021 marked a down year. Only 374 systems were installed versus 462 in 2020. However, the average system size jumped again to 29.1 MW. Although the database is supposed to cover everything installed since 2022, when I searched on 2022, I got zeroes. Not sure what was going on there.
It will be interesting to see the data from 2022 and 2023. The big question: was the decline in the number of systems installed in 2021 an anomaly, or did it signal the beginning of the grid interconnection problem manifesting itself?
Here’s the link to the database: https://eerscmap.usgs.gov/uspvdb/
