The latest “Electricity monthlyA report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows that solar energy grew 29.9% in September 2025 from a year earlier, supplying 9.7% of the country’s electricity production during the month, up from 7.6% in 2024.
Wheatridge Solar, Wind and Battery Energy Center in Lexington, Oregon on May 16, 2022.
Utility-scale solar grew by 35.8%, while that from small-scale systems increased by 11.2% in the first nine months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024. The combination of utility-scale and small-scale solar increased by almost a third (29.0%) and produced just over 9% (utility-scale: 6.85%; small-scale: 2.16%) of total U.S. electricity generation for January-September – up from 7.2% a year earlier. This is evident from an assessment of the data by the SUN DAY Campaign.
For the third month in a row, utility-scale solar generated more electricity than the nation’s wind farms: by 4% in July, by 15% in August and by 9% in September. Including residential systems, solar energy has surpassed wind production for five months in a row, and by more than 40% in September.
Similarly, year-to-date (YTD) electricity generated by solar power easily exceeded – by almost 65% – the production of the country’s hydropower plants (5.5% of total generation). In September alone, solar-generated electricity more than doubled the output of the country’s hydroelectric power stations. In September as well as in the new year, solar energy even produced more electricity than hydropower, biomass and geothermal energy combined.
Through the first nine months of 2025, electricity generation from wind plus large-scale and small-scale solar generated 18.8% of the U.S. total, up from 17.1% in the first three quarters of 2024. Additionally, the combination of wind and solar generated 15.1% more electricity than coal during the first nine months of this year, and 9.8% more than the nation’s nuclear power plants. As solar and wind power expanded, electricity generated by nuclear power actually fell by 0.1%.
The mix of all renewables produced 8.7% more electricity in January-September than a year ago and accounted for 25.6% of total U.S. electricity production, up from 24.2% a year earlier. The share of renewable energy sources in electricity generation is now second only to natural gas, whose electricity production actually fell by 3.8% in the first nine months of 2025.
“The Trump administration’s efforts to jump-start nuclear power and fossil fuels are not successful,” noted Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign. “Capacity additions from solar, wind and battery storage continue to dramatically outpace those from gas, coal and nuclear – and through expanding margins.”
