Recharged: Repowering America's Solar Fleet with Storage for a New Era of Demand

America's first generation of solar plants is entering its first major replacement cycle just as electricity demand driven by data centers and onshoring accelerates and new supply remains constrained. Owners of these aging assets face a defining choice: retire them, or repower them to unlock substantially more capacity from the land and grid connections they already control.

This report, a collaboration between Crux and Foundry Logic, is the first to size this emerging market. Using a bottom-up model of the installed US solar fleet by installation year and segment, the report finds that repowering could unlock the equivalent of 67 GW of new solar and 92 GW of dispatchable battery capacity by 2040. The report also lays out what owners, investors, lenders, and developers will need to work through to capture the opportunity, including:

• How interconnection and permitting treatment for repowers and battery additions varies by market and locality.
• How to finance a repower against an existing capital stack, lender relationship, and offtake contract.
• How tax credit and equipment-eligibility rules under the OBBBA and prohibited foreign entity (PFE) regime apply to repowered assets.