SOLAR AND BATTERIES HELPED CUT SUMMER WHOLESALE POWER PRICES 42% IN TEXAS AND 51% IN CALIFORNIA.
More clean capacity arrived—and midday wholesale power got cheaper.
SEIA's analysis says rapid solar and storage deployment coincided with sharply lower summer wholesale power prices in Texas and California, producing an estimated $3.55 billion and $2.5 billion in wholesale savings respectively.
WHAT HAPPENED
From summer 2021 to summer 2026, average wholesale electricity prices fell an estimated 42% in Texas and 51% in California. Over the same period, solar generation rose 421% in Texas and 90% in California, while battery output grew roughly 26-fold and sevenfold. Batteries increasingly shifted low-cost solar into the evening peak.
WHY THIS IS HOPESLOP
Clean-energy buildout is often framed only as an emissions story. These market results show the more immediate mechanism: abundant midday solar lowers marginal prices, and storage moves that cheap energy into higher-demand hours. The analysis cannot isolate every price driver, and it does not promise lower total bills, but it captures a real affordability pathway already operating at grid scale.
ORIGINAL SOURCESolar Energy Industries AssociationRead the original report
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