Texas has overtaken California to become the nation’s top producer of utility-scale solar power, capping a 25-year climb from a single darkened array in Austin to nearly one-fifth of all U.S. utility-scale solar generation, according to a July 8 analysis from Texas 2036, a nonpartisan public policy organization.
The analysis, written by Alex Rose Montgomery, a policy advisor for infrastructure and natural resources at the organization, credits the state’s “all of the above and below” approach to energy production for what she described as massive, unexpected growth. Between 2010 and 2025, Texas grew its utility-scale solar generation by 732,825%, while California, which started the race well ahead, grew by about 7,127% over the same period, according to the report.
The turnaround was hardly foreordained. Around the turn of the century, Texas’ foothold in solar amounted to a 0.3-megawatt array beside the Decker Creek Power Plant in northeast Austin, a facility that accounted for less than 0.0006% of the nation’s utility-scale solar production in 2002 and eventually went dark, the report said. Texas produced no utility-scale solar for nearly a decade while California steadily built up generation in the Mojave Desert. Then, starting in 2010, nearly 10,000 megawatt-hours of solar generation came online in Texas; that figure tripled the following year and quadrupled the year after.
Texas now accounts for 19.8% of total U.S. utility-scale solar generation and produces more than Florida, Arizona and Nevada combined, three of the top five solar states, according to the analysis. Montgomery attributed the lead to the state’s vast land and abundant sunshine, faster permitting and interconnection timelines than other states, and the design of ERCOT’s energy-only market, which favors the cheapest power available on the grid. Resources like solar and wind, which have no fuel costs, are sold first in the Texas marketplace, she noted.
In 2025, solar contributed 14% of ERCOT’s fuel mix, edging out coal by one percentage point for the first time, the report said, citing U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Austin Energy, which operated the original Decker Creek array, now runs 966 megawatts of solar generation and posted record solar investments in 2025.
The growth has not peaked, according to the analysis. The EIA expects 40% of total U.S. solar additions in 2026 to come from Texas, and the report projects an additional 14 million megawatt-hours of generation in 2026 with another 11.8 million by 2027, the equivalent of nearly half of the past 15 years’ additions arriving in just two years. “This massive and surprising growth in solar is not slowing down — and in fact, it appears to be accelerating,” Montgomery wrote.