New solar installations in Nevada fell dramatically in 2025
New solar power installations declined significantly in Nevada last year, as the Trump administration prioritized promoting fossil fuels while limiting the growth of renewable energy, according to an industry report released on Tuesday.
Nevada ranked 27th in the United States for solar installations last year, a dramatic fall from ranking among the top ten in 2023 and 2024, according to the report and data published by the Solar Energy Industries Association and Wood Mackenzie, an energy research firm.
Despite the fall in new solar power installations in 2025, Nevada still ranks sixth in the nation in total solar capacity.
Solar energy also maintained its position as the largest source of new electricity generation added to the electric grid across the United States.
Nevada has leaned into solar energy in recent years, generating nearly one-third of its electricity from solar thanks to the abundance of sunshine and public land within the state. Since 2016, the share of Nevada's in-state electricity generation from all solar sources has more than tripled.
However, recent federal actions targeting clean energy could halt as many as 10 large solar and storage projects located on federal and private lands, according to SEIA. Those projects represent nearly 95 percent of all planned new power within the state.
While NV is an extreme example of the recent decline in solar installations due to federal policy headwinds, nationwide the industry saw a 14 percent decline in 2025 over the solar generation capacity installed in 2024.
Long-duration energy storage deployments rose 49 percent in 2025
Energy experts suggest that the global average energy storage duration must increase from an average of around 2.5 hours to around 20 hours in order to maintain grid reliability while meeting growing load demand with renewable energy resources.
With this in mind, Global long-duration energy storage deployments rose 49 percent in 2025, exceeding 15 GWh, according to Wood Mackenzie's latest report. Ninety-three percent of all long-duration storage installations are in China, driven by its strong national and provincial government support for technologies capable of the discharge of power for longer than four hours.
While most people think of energy storage in terms of batteries, Compressed air energy storage actually made up 45 percent of this storage capacity, thermal storage represented 33 percent and vanadium redox flow batteries accounted for 21 percent of the 2025 installations of long-duration storage.
Despite this impressive growth rate, long-duration storage still only accounts for about 6 percent of total energy storage installations.
Currently, lithium-ion battery projects typically average only about two hours of storage capacity, while flow batteries and compressed air storage average around four hours and thermal storage average around eight.
However, the report suggests that falling prices and a robust supply will mean that lithium-ion batteries will become a more competitive technology for longer duration storage over the coming years.
Wood Mackenzie said it expects lithium-ion batteries to hold an 85 percent share of the energy storage market through 2034, with flow batteries and compressed air capturing just 5 percent and 3 percent of the market respectively.
California court strikes down NEM 3.0 reform appeal
This week the California Court of Appeals upheld Net Energy Metering 3.0 (NEM 3.0), after a months long review.
Several solar industry and environmental groups filed a lawsuit against the California Public Utilities Commission regarding NEM 3.0 in 2023, and the California Supreme Court picked up the lawsuit in April 2024. The Supreme Court ruled in August 2025 that the Court of Appeals must revisit and reassess the changes to net metering.
It has done so and decided that the program may remain unchanged.
NEM 3.0 shifted net metering within California to an hourly time-of-use rate for compensating residential solar customers based on when exported energy was needed most on the grid. This change was made, the commission argued, to encourage more energy storage adoption at a residential level. However in doing so, the energy export compensation for solar was cut by 70 to 80 percent compared to California's previous net metering programs.
The net metering change dramatically altered the economics of installing solar within California. Rooftop solar installations dropped by approximately 80 percent. This massive slowdown in demand resulted in over 17,000 job losses or approximately 22 percent of the state's residential solar workforce.
Virginia to become second state to legalize balcony solar
Virginia is about to become the second state to legalize balcony solar. 30 other states have similar bills moving through their various legislatures.
The Virginia legislature passed the bill legalizing plug-in solar in a 96-0 vote, sending it to Gov. Spanberger who is expected to sign it into law.
This means VA Residents can now plug in solar devices up to 1,200 watts
Utilities will not be allowed to charge fees of any sort on these systems, cannot require approval prior to installation, and carry zero liability for these devices. The customer owns the risk and the savings.
Utah was the first state to pass such a law that allows homeowners to plug in small PV systems directly into a 120V wall outlet. Thirty more state legislatures have introduced similar bills. This movement towards plug-in solar, which is quite popular throughout Europe, is taking hold as residential customers face rapidly rising utility rates due to extreme weather events and data center load demand.
Utilities in states considering this legislation are pushing back against these bills claiming such systems are unreliable and unsafe.
