The U.S. added a record amount of solar power generating capacity in 2024. That helped push the share of power that comes from renewables up to 24%.

All of that is according to a report out Thursday from Bloomberg’s energy research arm and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy.

The burst of growth in solar power was helped along by tax credits supported by the Biden administration. Now the industry is figuring out how it might navigate a future without those credits.

The solar industry is no stranger to challenges: tariffs on imported panels, labor shortages, long waits to connect new projects to the grid. 

“Many here call it the solar coaster, kind of up and down and up and down,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association.

In 2024, the ride was mostly up. Tax credits were available and regulations stayed fairly steady, she said. And when that’s the case, “People are willing to either invest their personal capital and put something on their home or literally hundreds of millions of dollars and build something,” said Hopper. 

Whatever happens to the tax credits, solar has something going for it in the energy market, said Dennis Wamsted at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

“We’ve gotten to a point where it’s just incredibly cheap to build, and it provides electricity that has no variable fuel cost,” said Wamsted. 

Electricity demand is growing again in the U.S. for the first time in about 15 years as more data centers, manufacturing plants and electric vehicles suck up more power. So, Wamsted said, solar’s speed of deployment works to its advantage.

“You can build a solar plant in 12 to 18 months. If you want to build that as a gas plant, it’s going to take you four to five years,” said Wamsted. 

And unlike a natural gas plant or even a wind turbine, solar arrays can be set up pretty much anywhere, said Tara Narayanan at BloombergNEF.

“You can also have solar projects that are a lot smaller, and can, you know, be on a field, can be in slightly less sunny parts of the country,” said Narayanan. 

So if Congress rolls back tax credits that have benefited the solar industry, other factors, Narayanan said, may work in its favor. 

But, the industry is still on that solar coaster, said Abigail Ross Hopper at the Solar Energy Industries Association. 

“It feels a little bit like, you know, when you’re kind of going fast around a corner, and you’re banking up on the side, right? It feels a bit like that,” said Hopper. 

And, she said, they’re waiting to see if they’ll go up or down.