Battery storage facilities and solar farms powered virtually all capacity growth in Texas’ electric grid throughout 2025, as the home of the nation’s oil and gas industry created almost twice as much new solar power as California.
More than 5,200 megawatts, or approximately 10,500 megawatt hours, of new battery storage made up the largest share of the more than 11,000 megawatts of new capacity, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), operator of Texas’ electric grid. Solar power accounted for the second-largest capacity addition, with more than 4,500 megawatts installed.
Pablo Vegas, ERCOT’s president and CEO, said during a board of directors meeting Tuesday that the new solar power represented “high” growth in intermittent power, while he characterized the new battery storage as “very rapid growth” of short-duration power supply.
“It’s a significant shift in operational requirements, and it represents an opportunity to create a more resilient and cost-effective grid,” Vegas said.
Wind power and natural gas trailed far behind solar and storage additions, adding more than 860 megawatts and 520 megawatts, respectively.
Vegas said the market continues to see low numbers of natural gas connections to the grid, despite the state’s $10 billion loan and grant fund to build more natural gas power plants. But he said there are “significant improvements” in interest among developers exploring natural gas connections to the grid.
Texas is leading the country in new solar capacity. The state added more than three gigawatts of solar power in the third quarter, making it the second-largest quarter for solar additions, according to a joint report by Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The U.S. solar industry installed 11.7 gigawatts of capacity nationally during the third quarter, a 20 percent increase from the same period last year.
Over the first nine months of 2025, Texas installed 7.4 gigawatts of solar, almost double the capacity of California’s newest additions. This comes despite the Trump Administration’s efforts to roll back renewable energy development in the U.S.
“This record-setting quarter for solar deployment shows that the market is continuing to turn to solar to meet rising demand,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA president and CEO.
The meaningful additions of solar and battery storage have positioned Texas’ grid to handle summer demand peaks well, with large amounts of solar generating electricity during the day and batteries helping the grid transition into the evening, Vegas said.
But winter continues to represent a higher risk period for ERCOT, Vegas said. Solar and storage capacity are limited during the most critical periods during winter, such as early in the morning before sunrise or in the evening just after sunset. But even then, the chance of rotating outages during the…
Read More: ERCOT’s Market is Transitioning Toward Storage and Solar
