Benchmarks · Renewable energy
Solar and wind:
the economics in numbers
15 figures from US Department of Energy national laboratory reports and IRENA. Utility-scale solar capex at $1.61/W against $1,700/kW for land-based wind, capacity factors from 17% to 38%, PPA prices, curtailment, fleet ageing and LCOE — the inputs without which a generation model is just revenue divided by nameplate.
United States: solar generation
| Metric | Value | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity-weighted installed cost, US utility-scale solar PV | $1.61/W-AC | 2024 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Utility-Scale Solar 2025 Data Update, October 2025 |
| Net capacity factor by region, US utility-scale solar PV | 17–31% | 2024 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Utility-Scale Solar 2025 Data Update, October 2025 |
| Levelized PPA price, US utility-scale solar PV (25th-75th percentile) | $22–40/MWh | 2024 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Utility-Scale Solar 2025 Data Update, October 2025 |
| Wholesale market value of solar generation, US national average | $32/MWh | 2024 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Utility-Scale Solar 2025 Data Update, October 2025 |
| Generation-weighted LCOE, US utility-scale solar PV (with / without tax credits) | $41–60/MWh | 2024 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Utility-Scale Solar 2025 Data Update, October 2025 |
United States: land-based wind
| Metric | Value | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capacity-weighted installed project cost, US land-based wind | $1,700/kW | 2023 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Market Report, 2024 Edition |
| Wind turbine price, equipment only | $900–1,100/kW | 2023 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Market Report, 2024 Edition |
| Capacity factor, US land-based wind (whole fleet vs 2022-vintage plants) | 33.5–38.2% | 2023 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Market Report, 2024 Edition |
| Wind curtailment rate, average across seven US ISOs | 4.6% | 2023 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Market Report, 2024 Edition |
| Year-20 capacity factor relative to year-2, median US wind project | 70% | 2024 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Market Report, 2024 Edition |
| Unsubsidised LCOE, US land-based wind | $49/MWh | 2023 | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Land-Based Wind Market Report, 2024 Edition |
Global: capex, capacity factors and LCOE
| Metric | Value | Period | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total installed cost, utility-scale solar PV, global weighted average | $691/kW | 2024 | IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024, July 2025 |
| Total installed cost, onshore wind, global weighted average | $1,041/kW | 2024 | IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024, July 2025 |
| Capacity factor, global weighted average (solar PV and onshore wind) | 17–34% | 2024 | IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024, July 2025 |
| LCOE, global weighted average (onshore wind and solar PV) | $0.034–0.043/kWh | 2024 | IRENA, Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2024, July 2025 |
How to read this
What matters about these numbers
- Solar capex is quoted against alternating current. The same $1.61/W is $1.22/W in direct current — a third of a difference that comes from the panel-to-inverter ratio, not from a different build cost. A model that mixes the two bases is a third out on budget.
- Wind capacity factor comes as two numbers, and they are not a range of one quantity: 33.5% is the whole US fleet in a weak wind year, 38.2% is only plants built in 2022. A new project cannot be modelled on the fleet average — that gap is a turbine generation.
- Output falls with age by more than models usually assume. By year 20 the median wind project runs at roughly 70% of its year-2 capacity factor — about 1.5% a year, and that figure absorbs failures and downtime, not just wear.
- Curtailment is a direct deduction from revenue: the grid refused what the plant could have produced. It averages 4.6% across seven US markets, but reaches 8.3% in SPP and stays under 2% in three of them. A national average is useless for a specific site.
- Price and value are different things. PPA prices ($22–40/MWh) were signed two to four years before commissioning. The market value of the output ($32/MWh) fell 35% in a single year, and in California at 30% solar penetration it reached $18/MWh: the more solar in the system, the cheaper its own hour.
- US and global figures are not directly comparable. IRENA reports $691/kW worldwide against roughly $1,610/kW in the United States — a difference in labour, site and interconnection, not in equipment.
- Fixed and variable O&M, the capex breakdown by component and project-debt terms are absent here. Those live in NREL spreadsheets that are closed to machine reading, and we will not fill them in from memory.
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