__________
USA is already second in the world, after China, at 179GW of installed capacity (in 2024) and adding 32GW - a 70% increase in capacity in 2023 - again, -- should be:

USA is already second in the world, after China, at 179GW of installed capacity (in 2024) and adding 32GW - a 70% increase in capacity in 2023 - again, much 'faster growth'... because it's coming from a very small base.
__________

__________
Solar Becoming Bigger Than Nuclear

Just like the case in the US, with "renewables (solar, wind and hydro) surpassing electricity generation due to 'fast growing' (from the small base) and, more importantly, shrinking use due to planned closure of coal plants, replacing it with huge expansion of natgas (thankfully, cheap enough, due to fracking and big energy companies' E&P) and stalled nuclear power (plants not being built in more than 40 years due to "nuclear scare" of Three Mile Island).

Put this in perspective - for all the "growth of solar installations" and projections hype (52% are residential PPAs):
"In 2024, 20 U.S. states (including California) generated, on average, about 5% of their electricity from solar"

. . . and . . .

"In 2024 the U.S. solar industry sales reached $26B... estimated to have contributed $250B to the economy" - that's less than 0.1% and 1% of the US GDP, respectively.

The really bad news is that while China was ramping up all energy buildouts, the US total annual electricity generation in absolute terms stalled from 2008 through 2023 - nuclear and hydro stalled; coal use dropped significantly but is still only slightly below combined wind and solar; only a huge increase in NG (in part, for new renewables installations backup), that dwarfs combined use of wind and solar, was responsible for keeping the lights on in the US.

India (24%), China (12%), Japan (9%), Brazil (8%) and Netherlands (8%) are buying most of the US-produced "excess coal" for those coal-fired plants they built in that period.

EU in 2022 has reclassified NG (mostly methane) and nuclear as "green" energy, and recently relaxed regs on methane emissions, because they need the illusion of achieving 2030-2050 "green climate goals" fantasy to coincide with their real needs for "energy security"... and their electricity costs skyrocketed.


"Generation data confirms the divergence without ambiguity. Solar produced 2,778 TWh in 2025, surpassing nuclear's 2,703 TWh, with that gap achieved on the back of a 636 TWh single-year increase - a 30% year-on-year expansion that no baseload technology has matched in the modern grid era"

Another case of Denominator Blindness fallacy. Of course, baseload generation can't possibly grow at 30% YOY, its size is already much, much larger than solar, mature technologies grow much slower than "emerging" technologies, just like "Internet" is growing much slower today than it was in 1990s.

Also, 630TWh of that "636TWh single-year increase" was exclusively due to new China installations, where they also expanded use of coal (new plants) and gas and nuclear capacity. All while the US and EU have been reducing/retiring the nuclear capacity.

|------- ... Solar ended 2025 at 2,383 GW of installed capacity; nuclear sat at 399.5 GW -- and actually shrank, losing 0.5 GW to retirements ... -------|

USA is already second in the world, after China, at 179GW of installed capacity (in 2024) and adding 32GW - a 70% increase in capacity in 2023 - again,

The explanation is provided right there, if you could see it - it requires 6x of solar capacity to match 1x of nuclear generation, making it not cheap at all, not even counting additional costs like huge batteries and grid connection/overload issues (due to intermittency) and almost necessary source of stable backup, usually in the form of natgas plants.