EIA: 16% of new US solar is co-located with batteries

The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported on October 30, 2026 that more than 16% of utility-scale solar capacity added in the United States between January and September was built with co-located batteries already in operation, up from 2% in 2017. Including projects slated for the fourth quarter, the 2026 share reaches 19%.

The hybrid solar-battery plant lets operators send solar electricity to the grid or charge it into storage depending on wholesale prices, which tend to fall during peak photovoltaic generation hours and rise in the afternoon. For 2027 and 2028 plans, the EIA records that more than 30% of solar additions include batteries, according to EIA-860M form data. California, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada concentrate shares more than double the national average: of the 13% of US generation capacity that is already solar, 18% is co-located with batteries.

The pattern reaches Mexico with a different mandate. In the mixed contracts CFE awarded as of June 2026, for 7,411 MW across 37 projects, plants must integrate batteries equivalent to at least 30% of their capacity, with a minimum duration of three hours, according to Energy21. The consultancy Caraiva y Asociados estimated that this requirement raises the cost by up to 840 million dollars.

The same proportional requirement will affect the size of the storage market. El Economista reported on July 15, 2026, citing Quartux figures, that the country operates close to 375 MWh in batteries and that capacity would at least multiply 8.4 times, to about 3,150 MWh, toward the end of the six-year term, with an estimated investment of 787.5 million dollars.

The detail both markets share is the transmission bottleneck: Energy21 reports that only 17 of the 37 awarded projects had clear interconnection conditions as of June, and that of 154 planned transmission works, 30 had been completed. The next reading point is in the 2027 and 2028 plans developers enter into the EIA inventory, and in the signing of CFE's mixed contracts.

This article was drafted with artificial intelligence assistance from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.