The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) believes 23.7 GW of new capacity additions will be reported in 2019 in the country. Of this, utility scale capacity additions will comprise 46% of wind power, 34% of natural gas and 18% solar PV. The remaining 2% will come from other renewables and battery storage capacity.
While wind power's share will be 10.9 GW and that of natural gas will be 7.5 GW, solar PV will add 4.3 GW of utility scale capacity, the governmental organization believes. Almost half of the 4.3 GW solar PV will be located in 3 states of Texas, California and North Carolina. As per EIA's Short-Term Energy Outlook, an additional 3.9 GW of small scale PV will come online by the end of 2019.
Along with this capacity addition, at least 8.3 GW of capacity is scheduled to be retired consisting of 53% or 4.5 GW of coal power, 2.2 GW or 27% of natural gas, and 18% or 1.5 GW of nuclear power plants. In 2018, the US retired around 13.7 GW of coal power capacity.
The US Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables forecast 7.2 GW of utility scale solar power capacity additions in 2019 in their US Solar Market Insight Q4/2018 (see US Q3/2018 PV Additions Drop 15% YoY).