Solar will – For the first time, solar is projected to generate more electricity than coal in ERCOT’s Texas power market in 2026, with the U.S. government expecting 78 billion kilowatt-hours from solar versus 60 from coal. The shift is already visible seasonally—solar beat
The sun is doing something coal hasn’t managed to do in Texas—keeping up the schedule.
This year. solar is set to generate more electricity than coal in the power market managed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas. or ERCOT. for the first time ever. It’s not because Texas is pouring resources into new coal plants—nobody is building new coal power plants in the state. Instead. developers are adding more solar in Texas than anywhere else in the country. changing the math of what the grid can produce.
The federal government’s forecast captures the scale of the shift. In 2026, the government expects ERCOT will receive 78 billion kilowatt-hours from solar and just 60 billion kilowatt-hours from coal.
The timing matters, too. Solar doesn’t dominate every month uniformly, and there are seasonal variations. Last year, solar output beat coal on a monthly basis from March through August. This year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, or EIA, at the Department of Energy expects that streak to widen—from March through December.
Texas’s solar surge is also ahead of what’s happening across the country. Nationally. the combination of wind and solar surpassed coal generation in 2024. as noted in an analysis by Ember. a think tank that conducts research on clean energy. The difference is that the solar industry is further along in Texas than the national average.
That reality cuts through a political line that has tried to pin Texas’s future on coal and gas. The trend undercuts prevailing energy narratives coming out of the Trump administration. which has attempted to boost coal and gas as tools of “energy dominance. ” while blocking or canceling American energy that comes from renewables. The Department of Energy, for instance, is keeping struggling coal plants on life support at great expense to taxpayers. At the same time, the Department of the Interior is blocking wind and solar developments that intersect with public lands.
Supporters of coal have argued it’s more reliable than solar because it can generate power around the clock. But Texas’s experience points to a different kind of reliability—one built on a portfolio rather than a single fuel. Even with coal’s built-in advantage. coal plants in Texas can’t keep up with the total annual and monthly production from the rapidly growing solar fleet.
And ERCOT’s reliability hasn’t been damaged in the process. ERCOT meets evening demand with a diverse mix that includes gas plants, nuclear, wind, and, increasingly, batteries. The storage matters because it holds onto excess solar power for use when the sun stops shining.
Texas leaders didn’t necessarily set out to disprove federal energy claims. The Lone Star State kept its electricity system out of the hands of federal regulators. and in the 1990s and early 2000s it reformed the system to promote free market competition instead of centralized planning by monopoly utilities. That market structure. combined with lots of space and lax building regulations. created an environment where wind. solar. and batteries could flourish. The result is a grid now fortified with tens of gigawatts of new capacity—capacity that the state can lean on as it tackles heat waves and tempers price spikes.
For states that have set ambitious climate goals but haven’t built much solar or batteries yet. Texas is offering a kind of practical blueprint. even if it can’t be copied overnight. They can’t immediately switch over to an ERCOT-style market. but they can speed up the time it takes to get permits and grid connection. dial back the level of deference to habitually conservative legacy utilities. and make sure that clean energy gets a fair shot in the race to serve surging energy needs. It’s also a moment to reexamine old market rules that subtly privilege entrenched players at the expense of new entrants that would make cheaper and cleaner power.
ERCOT’s shift isn’t expected to stop at solar taking the lead this year. After more of the rapid-fire solar buildout. EIA expects ERCOT will produce 99 billion kilowatt-hours of solar power in 2027—up 27 percent from 2026. By then, the upstart industry is expected to have left its well-established coal competition in the dust.
Texas solar ERCOT coal generation renewable energy grid reliability batteries EIA Ember energy policy