This spring, clean energy in the US set record after record

As spring gives way to summer, many parts of the U.S. are already feeling the heat. It’s a good moment to take stock of the energy breakthroughs that transpired this past ​“shoulder season.”

That’s the period of time between the chill of winter and the high temperatures of July and August, when renewable energy systems tend to perform best. With the milder weather and longer daylight hours, total demand stays relatively low while wind and solar ramp up, covering greater shares of grid consumption.

Here are four ways clean energy set new records this spring — and what these feats tell us about where the energy system is headed. While records reflect momentary successes amid ideal conditions, they’re worth noting because they push the boundaries of what’s possible, and lay the groundwork for similar success across broader swaths of the year.

U.S. solar generation beats coal nationwide in May

Coal used to make more electricity than any other source in the U.S. Then it fell behind natural gas, and eventually dropped below nuclear. In May, the country’s coal power production slipped behind solar generation, making sunshine the third-biggest source of electricity for the month for the first time.

The U.S. isn’t building more coal plants, though the Trump administration has elected to stop any from closing down, whether or not they can physically operate. Solar, on the other hand, has led the nation in new capacity construction for five years running. When the sun emerges from its wintry slumber, that ever larger fleet shows what it can do.

This upset is all the more striking because, as renewables skeptics love to repeat, solar doesn’t produce all the time. Coal plants can run 24/7, if they aren’t broken or hobbled by uncompetitive operating costs. But even with that structural limitation, solar produced more gigawatt-hours in the daytime than coal did throughout the whole month of May. And this is true not just for a particularly sunny region, or a state with aggressive solar-friendly policies, but across the country.

Solar might not beat coal production for all of 2026, but it’s only a matter of time before it outperforms coal for an entire season, and then eventually for a whole year.

Clean energy romps after dark in California

California has entered the execution phase of its energy transition, when the long-promised potential of solar and batteries has turned into empirical breakthroughs in the power markets. The records came at a dizzying pace this spring.

On the evening of March 29, batteries covered 44% of demand (and 42.8% of the supply mix) in the grid managed by the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which serves about 80% of the state. That was a mild Sunday, so batteries could meet a higher portion of demand than, say, on a blistering hot workday with everyone’s air conditioning turned on. But the absolute numbers speak for themselves: Batteries discharged over 12 gigawatts at 7 p.m. That’s more than New York City consumes on a hot summer day. Not bad for a battery construction spree that largely transpired over the last five years.

On May 16, batteries held gas plants to a shockingly marginal role in the grid for a four-hour period after 7 p.m. Gas never made it above 3% of demand during that time, according to an analysis by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The batteries active in California typically can sustain maximum discharge for four hours. This is visible in the daily pattern of grid activity: Batteries surge around sunset to become the single biggest power source in the CAISO grid. Some of them save their energy for later in the night or the early-morning hours before solar produces again. This dynamic leaves a gap in the middle of the night, when gas shows its value.

One way to extend the clean energy success story would be to build longer-lasting batteries. The first major battery with eight hours of duration came online on June 1 in Southern California, and it will offer a sneak preview into what happens when batteries can serve a longer swath of the day.

In the near term, California is tapping more wind power for nighttime supply. The multi-gigawatt SunZia wind farm in New Mexico started shipping power to California this spring, instantly setting new records for wind power’s contribution in the CAISO grid. The Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis compared the grid activity for May 16 of 2025 and 2026. On that day last year, from midnight to 6 a.m., gas generated 3.6 gigawatts, keeping the system going through the night. This year, for that same time period, gas contributed a paltry 560 megawatts. The cheap wind power rushing in from SunZia was pushing gas out of its last redoubt.

One could say these observations are cherry-picking in favor of clean energy. But such ripe cherries simply didn’t exist a year ago, much less five years. California’s clean energy plants should be able to replicate or beat these records in the fall shoulder months. The more challenging test will be whether solar, wind, and batteries can steal market share from gas in the midst of a heat wave, when the fossil fuel has historically hit its maximum output. This El Niño cycle promises to deliver the requisite conditions for that test.

New York sets a solar record

New York state hasn’t built the kind of batteries California has, but it did set a new solar production record on June 3. Solar of all sizes delivered 5.6 gigawatts, serving a record 29% of demand at noon that day, according to the New York Independent System Operator.

The details are more revealing: Almost all of that generation came from small-scale, customer-sited systems, while utility-scale contributed only 530 megawatts. That’s less than the output of individual solar projects out West.

Even the regions that struggle to build much solar are breaking records for themselves. And where you don’t have wide open desert to build sprawling installations, small ones on rooftops and in yards can add up to a meaningful surge.

Texas breaks records for everything

This spring, Texas set just about every clean energy record you could ask for, as helpfully documented by data firm Grid Status.

Batteries shipped the most power to the grid on March 13, at 7:30 p.m., with 10.4 gigawatts, which satisfied a record 20% of evening demand at that moment.

Wind and solar served a record 79% of demand (and 76.9% of supply) on the afternoon of March 14; along with baseload nuclear, the zero-carbon power plants limited fossil-fueled power to just 13% of the fuel mix for a five-hour swath of midday.

The Texas grid produced more solar power than ever before on May 13, a stunning 34.4 gigawatts at 12:40 p.m. It produced more wind power than ever before on May 17, nearly 29 gigawatts at 11:50 p.m. The highest combined renewable output came on May 14 at 3:15 p.m., almost 48 gigawatts.

Again, these are mild shoulder months, when Houstonians aren’t sweltering too much yet and when gas plant operators take their machinery offline for maintenance. In these favorable conditions, we’re seeing what happens when a society unleashes the trifecta of solar, wind, and batteries. The solar peaks at midday; the wind often kicks up after sunset. When a particular day gets both sunny and gusty, the two resources alone now cover most of the midday consumption. And batteries are carving deeper into the evening peaks, corroborating the trend that California pioneered.

No one source of clean energy can run the whole grid on its own, but none has to. The portfolio effect is on stark display as Texas delivers a deregulated version of clean energy abundance.