Climate Conversations
- 7 hours ago
- 1 min read
California Leads
In May 2026, California generated over half (51%) of its electricity from solar panels for the entire month. Both utility-scale projects and roof-top arrays figure in this statistic. Of note, California is the first economy worldwide to reach this milestone. Hungary is close behind at 47%, but with a far smaller GDP.
In California, natural gas is the only other power source that produces appreciable levels of electricity. However, solar led natural gas not only during May, but in January through April as well.
It is solar plus battery storage that has brought energy production to the half-way mark. Panels alone could not have accounted for the current energy percentage. Batteries now total 16 gigawatts of capacity. At night, batteries meet over a quarter of California’s power demand. A decade ago, solar generated just 17% of the state’s electricity in May. Batteries barely figured in the mix. California has come a long way, and this trend hopefully will continue into the future.- from Canary Media
