Texas installed more solar power than any other state last year

Texas has emerged as a national leader when it comes to solar energy: the Lone Star state led the nation in new solar installations in the first half of 2024 and is projected to lead the nation in solar power over the next five years.

About 25% of all new solar power in the U.S. last year was built in Texas, including eight of the 10 largest solar projects, according to market intelligence firm CleanView. The state now ranks second in the nation in total installed solar capacity, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) says, trailing only California and generating enough electricity to power more than 4.5 million homes. Limited to just utility-scale solar, without including rooftop installations for businesses and consumers, Texas is already No. 1.

Within Texas, solar and battery storage represent an overwhelming share of new power coming online, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the new capacity added to its grid in 2024. New solar capacity more than doubled from 2023, and battery storage more than tripled. A recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas showed that its surging solar and battery resources were critical to the state’s ability to handle power demand throughout last summer.

That’s all to say that Texas is the nation’s reigning solar power champion. That may seem counterintuitive given that the red state hasn’t traditionally made climate change a major political priority. But its fast-paced clean energy adoption is demonstrating that environmental benefits are just one advantage of solar power and other forms of renewable energy.

“People in Texas want to make money, and they know how to make money off of energy projects,” Brian Korgel, director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, told EnergySage. “You have a lot of land, you have landowners looking to make money off of it, and you have developers who know how to make these deals.”

Texas isn’t exactly unique, however. Solar installations have rapidly grown across the entire country, driven largely by sharply decreasing prices as the technology matures and scales. Batteries are following a similar trajectory, and play an increasingly important role in helping to manage power demand as solar grows.

Yet the state does benefit from some unique attributes, Korgel said. First and foremost, it gets a lot of sun, and it has a lot of space to install infrastructure. Its strong history in the energy space and the surrounding ecosystem also help: Texas was an early leader in wind energy, and many of the lessons learned in establishing that renewable resource have since been applied to solar and battery projects. Some analysts also attribute the success to simpler permitting processes in Texas compared to other states, making it easier to build out infrastructure.

Finally, Korgel noted, Texas operates on its own grid, run by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). That means it doesn’t face the same level of federal oversight as other grid operators that work at the regional level with multiple states, which may play a role in new infrastructure getting online more quickly.

Already, solar and battery storage represent 83% of the new energy generation projects waiting for interconnection to the state’s grid in the coming years.

In short, Texas is a place that builds a lot of energy, and right now solar and batteries are the smart things to build.