Solar and wind accounted for about 7% of the electricity produced by generators within New England in 2022, according to the group that oversees the power grid, with solar growing much faster than wind power in recent years.

Solar farms made about 3.4% of the total electricity produced in the six states in 2022 and wind farms about 3.8% of the electricity.

The figures don’t include electricity imported from Canada (mostly Quebec) and New York, a small portion of which came from solar and wind plants. Imports made up about one-seventh of New England’s annual power needs.

You can see all the data from ISO-New England at iso-ne.com/about/key-stats/resource-mix/.

The solar total was produced by 3,600 MW of solar power plants, so-called utility solar. By comparison, Seabrook Station generates 1,200 MW at full blast. 

The solar total does not include power from the roughly 5,000 MW of rooftop solar, known as behind-the-meter, that ISO-NE estimates has been installed throughout New England.

ISO-NE doesn’t get direct data on BTM solar production - that’s what “behind the meter” means – but will be releasing an estimate of total rooftop production over the course of 2022 after some more number-crunching.

New England’s utility solar has been growing pretty fast. Consider its total production each year in gigawatt-hours since 2018:

■2022: 3,607 (about 3.4% of total power generation within the region, not including imports)

■2021: 2,669

■2020: 2,079

■2019: 1,668

■2018: 1,233 (about 1.2% of total generation within the region)

To complete the comparison, go back a decade:

■2012: 36 (about .03% of New England’s total generation)

In other words, New England's utility solar plants have tripled annual electricity output over the past five years and increased it 100-fold in a decade. Solar is still a pretty minor source of electricity, though. Hydropower is twice as productive.

Rooftop solar is harder to get data on. Assuming that rooftop solar is (at a guess) 2/3 as efficient as utility solar because it's not placed as well, the estimated production from rooftop panels would be about 3% to 4% of New England's total power production.

As for wind power, it hasn't grown much lately - from 3,374 GwH in 2018 to 3,874 in 2022, a rise of about 3% a year due to opposition to on-shore wind farms. When offshore wind farms start coming online in a couple of years, that will change.

Fossil gas continues to dominate the region's power plants – making 47% of the total electricity in 2022 – with nuclear second at 23%. Coal from the one power plant, in Bow, created just 1/3 of 1% of New England electricity while oil, mostly used to replace natural gas during cold snaps, was 2% of the total.

The most hopeful category is the tiny “price-responsive demand” which is just 0.04% of total output. This counts demand-response and similar efforts which use the intelligent grid to reduce demand when needed rather than struggling to increase supply. Improving that aspect of the grid will be a key component of 21st-century electricity.

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