Of the 368 utility-scale power plants that began operation in the United States from January through June, solar was the clear leader—not by a small margin. U.S. Energy Information Administration data covering the first half of 2026 shows 207 utility-scale solar projects came online during that period, accounting for more than half of all new plants by count.
Batteries ranked second with 95 installations. Natural gas combustion turbines added 22, and natural gas internal combustion engines added 21. Fossil fuel additions together totaled 43—roughly one-fifth the number of solar projects that came online in the same window.
The single largest plant by generating capacity was Hornet Solar in Swisher County, Texas, at 600 megawatts—the top new U.S. power plant by nameplate capacity for the first six months of the year.
The list's top entries by total output, however, belong to wind, not solar. SunZia Wind South and SunZia Wind North in New Mexico went online this spring with a combined generating capacity of 3,650 megawatts, making them the largest wind farms in the country. The SunZia project has been in development for approximately a decade.
SunZia's arrival matters for the onshore wind sector because U.S. onshore wind development has slowed sharply in recent years. A combination of regulatory hurdles and local opposition has constrained the pipeline. SunZia was a long-awaited exception to that trend, not a sign that the sector has recovered broadly.
The battery storage numbers deserve attention alongside solar. Ninety-five battery installations in six months reflects how closely storage tracks solar buildout at the utility scale—solar generation is intermittent, and grid operators increasingly require storage to accompany new solar capacity to manage dispatch. The pairing of the two categories is not coincidental; it reflects interconnection agreements and state-level procurement rules that have increasingly bundled the two asset types.
For context on solar's longer trajectory, utility-scale solar power generated 295.7 terawatt-hours in the United States in 2025, according to federal data. The pace of new plant additions in the first half of 2026 runs consistent with that output trend continuing upward.
The capital economics behind these numbers are straightforward. Solar and battery projects have shorter permitting timelines and modular construction relative to large thermal plants. A 600-megawatt solar farm like Hornet Solar can move from final permitting to energization faster than a comparable combined-cycle gas plant, which requires fuel supply contracts, longer construction schedules and more complex interconnection studies. That speed advantage compounds over a multi-year pipeline.
The 22 natural gas combustion turbine additions represent a category that has drawn significant policy attention in 2026, with announcements of large gas plant proposals tied to data center load growth. The EIA first-half data shows those announcements have not yet translated into new online capacity—the 22 units that came online were a fraction of the solar count. Announcements and operational reality remain two different columns in the data.
The Trump administration has emphasized fossil fuel development as a policy priority and has moved to ease permitting for oil, gas and coal projects. The first-half plant data shows that market and capital forces—construction lead times, contracted offtake, interconnection queues—continue to deliver solar and storage in volume regardless of the policy backdrop. Projects that reach the construction phase reflect investment decisions made one to three years earlier, meaning the 2026 additions largely reflect capital commitments from 2023 and 2024.
The second half of 2026 will begin to show whether the pipeline of announced gas projects—many tied to hyperscaler data center demand—starts to appear in EIA operational data, or whether solar and storage continue to dominate additions by count and, increasingly, by aggregate capacity.
