Solar outproduced coal in April—but not on the grid - Ars Technica

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When last we looked at the state of the US grid, the ongoing explosion in solar energy had turned it into a major contributor, but one that still lagged well behind fossil-fuel-powered generation. So it was a bit of a surprise when preliminary data suggested that May of 2026 saw solar power pass coal-fired generation for the first time ever in the US. Now, with the official release of April grid data by the Energy Information Administration, we can see that production of solar electricity had passed coal a month earlier—with a bit of a caveat.

The caveat being that a substantial chunk of that solar production never made it to the grid, since it’s produced by rooftop installations and used in the building they sit atop.

The situation heading into April/May was pretty simple. After a brief resurgence last year, coal use resumed its decline, despite repeated government attempts to prop it up. Meanwhile, solar continued its rapid growth, driven by its position as the cheapest way to add generating capacity in most of the US. But this growth had started from a small base, and the early months of the year are marked by seasonally low production of solar. As a result, growth above 20 percent, year over year, still left solar as providing only 6 percent of the power on the US grid, a sharp contrast to coal’s 16 percent.

The longer days in April, however, will naturally boost solar’s production, and that will combine with all the new installations that tend to be completed near the end of the year. Add in coal’s continuing decline, and the gap between the two closed considerably. One year ago in April, coal provided 14 percent of the power on the grid, and solar just 8.3 percent. The equivalent numbers for 2026 are 12 percent and 9.4 percent. So, there’s still a gap, but it’s considerably smaller.

And this year, that gap was filled entirely by smaller-scale solar installations, like the ones on people’s rooftops. Much of the energy that’s generated through small-scale solar never reaches the grid, since it’s consumed at the location in which it’s generated. Nevertheless, the EIA attempts to estimate the production derived from these installations (you can read about its methodology if you’d like to know more).

The April numbers show that coal was used to generate about 40 Terawatt-hours of electricity. Utility-scale solar produced 31, while small-scale photovoltaic added another 9.8. That was enough to inch solar generation ahead. If you combine all photovoltaic with wind and hydro, renewables produced 117 TW-hr, nearly triple the amount of power produced using coal, and nearly as much as the 124 TW-hr produced using natural gas.

We’re probably a few years off from the point where solar remains ahead of coal for the entire year. But solar’s growth and the continued decline of coal mean that it’s likely that solar will be a larger source of power for the entirety of the summer and will remain so indefinitely barring an unprecedented surge in demand.

We’ll have a better look at solar’s performance in May in roughly a month, when the final Energy Information Administration numbers are available.

John Timmer

Senior Science Editor

John Timmer

Senior Science Editor

John is Ars Technica's science editor. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Biochemistry from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California, Berkeley. When physically separated from his keyboard, he tends to seek out a bicycle, or a scenic location for communing with his hiking boots.

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