Big Impact of Small Solar Quarterly Update: 2026 Q2

The quarterly Big Impact of Small Solar series aims to show just how much distributed, small-scale (community, residential, and commercial) solar is contributing to new power capacity additions in the United States. Local, small solar and storage projects, when added together, can have a big impact on the energy transition!

Key takeaways:

• Solar continues to be the primary source of new electricity capacity in the U.S., with 55 percent of new capacity in Q2 from large and small solar. However, more fossil power came on line in Q2 than in any other quarter in the past two years, reducing solar’s share of new capacity additions.
• Distributed solar kept up its relatively steady pace, with almost 1.6 gigawatts of new capacity this quarter.
• Over 2.5 gigawatt-hours of distributed storage was added in Q2.

The chart below illustrates the past two years of electric power capacity additions in the U.S., disaggregated by energy source, quarterly.

For timely updates from the Energy Democracy Initiative, follow John Farrell on Bluesky or Twitter, and subscribe to the Energy Democracy newsletter.

Featured Photo Credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0)