US Solar Farms

Finding

US solar is moving from the California desert to Texas and the interior, and the new gigawatt-class farms are built as solar-plus-storage plants

The US installed 43.2 GWdc of solar in 2025, down 14% from the 2024 record but still 54% of new generating capacity (SEIA and Wood Mackenzie). Texas led with 11 GW. California still has the most cumulative solar, 55.1 GW, but Texas is 3.2 GW behind it, and Texas passed California in utility-scale capacity in 2024 (EIA).

The first wave of very large US plants - Topaz, Desert Sunlight, Solar Star, Copper Mountain - was built in California and Nevada in the early 2010s, many on First Solar cadmium telluride thin-film modules. The current wave is in ERCOT and the interior: Invenergy's Samson Solar Energy Center in northeast Texas, SB Energy's Orion Solar Belt in Milam County, and Doral's Mammoth Solar in Indiana. In the West, new plants such as Edwards and Sanborn and Gemini add gigawatt-hours of batteries to shift midday output into the evening peak.

China installed 382 GW in 2025, 57% of the world's 664 GW, and builds single sites larger than any US plant: the 3.5 GW Midong project in Xinjiang is among the largest single solar plants in operation. Chinese firms also make most of the world's polysilicon, wafers and cells; see Solar PV Supply Chain.

Plant-level data - capacity, tracking type, module technology, storage, online year and power-purchase prices for every US utility-scale plant - is maintained by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in its Utility-Scale Solar data and report, built from EIA filings and updated each year. Use it for plant-level lookups; the tables below summarize it.

By state

Leading solar states

Cumulative installed solar, all segments (utility, commercial, residential), at the end of 2025 (SEIA Solar Market Insight 2025 Year in Review). Other states: see the LBNL data above.

Largest farms

Largest US solar farms

Operating or in phased construction; nameplate as reported (AC unless marked).

China and world

The world's largest solar parks

Single sites and contiguous complexes; China builds the largest.

With storage

Solar farms and the grid

Large solar farms are sited where land, sun and transmission line up, and transmission is now the binding constraint: interconnection queues in ERCOT, MISO and PJM hold hundreds of gigawatts of solar and storage. Co-located batteries let a plant reuse its grid connection after sunset, which is why most new Western solar farms are built as solar-plus-storage. See Notable BESS Deployments and T&D Upgrades.

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• Solar PV Supply Chain
• Notable BESS Deployments
• Wind Power
• T&D Upgrades
• Energy Hub