Solar Plants Paired With Batteries Hit 16% of New US Builds
The US Energy Information Administration says 16% of new solar projects this year come with co-located storage, and the share could pass 30% within two years.
New solar farms in the United States increasingly come with batteries attached. A federal report puts the share of new projects with co-located storage at 16% this year, up from about 2% in 2017.
What the EIA counted
The US Energy Information Administration published the figures in a report dated 30 October. As of September, 16% of new solar projects deployed this year include co-located battery storage. That is about 41 GW. The agency says the share may reach 19% by the end of the year and is likely to pass 30% over the next two years, based on planned additions.
The path has not been smooth. Only around 2% of new solar capacity, or 5 GW, was paired with storage in 2017. The share peaked in 2023 at 25% of projects, then declined in the following two years.
Why operators pair the two
The EIA explains the logic through wholesale prices. An operator with a battery can send solar output either to the grid or to storage, depending on prices. The EIA says prices in solar-heavy regions move opposite to solar output. A combined plant can manage both resources together to get the most value.
The agency also notes that Southwest states have higher-than-average solar shares and higher levels of co-located solar and battery capacity. Nationally, 13% of utility-scale generating capacity is solar photovoltaic, and 18% of that is co-located with batteries. In California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada, co-located solar generation runs at over twice the national share.
Texas and California as test cases
The Solar Energy Industries Association, in an Oct. 22 report, looked at 2021 to 2026. It found that solar output in Texas grew 421% and in California 90%. Battery storage capacity grew more than 26-fold in Texas and nearly sevenfold in California.
For June to August, SEIA compared the same period against 2021. In CAISO, demand rose 2.5% while the inflation-adjusted average wholesale price fell 40%. ERCOT used 30.1% more power, and its average wholesale price was 42% lower after inflation.
The hybrid pipeline
A September analysis from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory counted 436 co-located solar-plus-storage projects in the United States at the end of 2025. They hold 29 GW of solar capacity and close to 17 GW of storage. In the interconnection queue, solar-plus-storage makes up 86% of proposed hybrid facilities, at close to 361 GW of planned capacity.
Source: Utility Dive