According to EIA, 23.7 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity additions and 8.3 GW of capacity retirements are expected for the U.S. electric power sector in 2019. The additions are embodied by wind (46%), natural gas (34%), and solar photovoltaics (18%), with the remaining 2% consisting primarily of other renewables and battery storage capacity.
Specifically:
- Wind
An overall of 10.9 GW of wind capacity is planned to be online in 2019. The majority of the capacity will come online at the end of the year, a common phenomenon for renewable capacity.
Three states—Texas, Iowa, and Illinois—will be home to more than half of the 2019 planned wind capacity additions.
- Natural Gas
Scheduled natural gas capacity additions are firstly in the form of combined-cycle plants at 6.1 GW and combustion-turbine plants, at 1.4 GW.
The biggest amount of natural gas capacity is set to be online in June 2019, to prepare for the summer demand.
From the planned natural gas capacity additions, the 60% will take place in Pennsylvania, Florida and Louisiana.
- Solar photovoltaics.
Approximately, half of the 4.3 GW of utility-scale electric power sector solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity additions are placed in three states in the US:
- Texas;
- California;
- North Carolina.
Common to electric power sector, others such as the residential and commercial sectors also install solar PV. In addition to utility-scale capacity, EIA expects an additional 3.9 GW of small-scale solar PV capacity to enter service by the end of 2019.
Moreover, the scheduled capacity for 2019 acquire coal, 53%, natural gas, 27%, and nuclear, 18%, with a single hydroelectric plant in the state of Washington and other smaller renewable and petroleum capacity accounting for the remaining 2%.
- Coal
The majority of coal retirements are planned to take place in the end of 2019.
Half of the planned retirement capacity for coal is at a single plant, Navajo, located in Arizona that first came online in the 1970s. The 4.5 GW of coal-fired capacity expected to retire in 2019 is relatively small compared with the estimated 13.7 GW that retired in 2018, which was the second-highest amount of coal capacity retired in a year.
- Natural gas
The scheduled natural gas retirements, 2.2 GW, consist mostly, 2.0 GW, of steam turbine plants.
The natural gas steam turbine plants that are scheduled to retire are all older units that came online in the 1950s or 1960s. Most of the retiring natural gas steam turbine capacity, 1.6 GW is located in California.
- Nuclear
Two nuclear plants, in overall 1.5 GW, are currently scheduled to retire in 2019. The Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, located in Massachusetts, is scheduled to retire in May, and the remaining unit at the Three Mile Island Power Station, located in Pennsylvania, is scheduled to retire in September.
