The continental U.S. added nearly 28 GW of new electric power generation capacity during the 6 months ending in March 2026, according to the latest edition of the Hitachi Energy Grid Pulse, an industry report that analyzes macro-level trends in electricity demand, grid load growth, and the addition of new power-generating resources across regional electrical grids.
Capacity additions were dominated by solar, wind and battery energy storage systems (BESS), with 13.2 GW of solar, 7.8 GW of BESS and 4 GW of wind added. Fossil gas, oil and other sources accounted for 3.4 GW of new capacity across the lower 48 states.
The additions brought the generation capacity represented by solar and wind to an all-time high of 24% of total installed capacity. However, generation from these sources contributed only 18% of all electricity produced, with the difference in capacity vs. generation due to the intermittent nature of the two renewable sources.
The report also tracked load growth across the country’s major transmission regions during the time period, with nationwide demand for electricity estimated to rise by 2% over the same six-month period the year prior.
Demand in the region served by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (EROCT) led the nation, growing by 9% year-over-year; something the report’s authors attributed largely to data center demand.
During a media call about the report, Hitachi Energy advisor Debashis Bose noted that peak demand in ERCOT — historically around 90 gigawatts, was forecasted to increase to as much as 148 GW by 2030. “It’s growing more than 50% in the next few years, so the growth rate is pretty phenomenal,” Bose said, adding, “what we are seeing here is… trends are already starting to pop up.”
Texas also led state capacity additions, accounting for just over 6.8 GW. In all six states accounted for 50% of new capacity additions. These states and their added capacities were:
Planned data centers and capacity additions
The Hitachi report included the U.S. map graphic shown above, indicating the states in which the highest number of data centers are planned and under construction includes Virginia, Texas, California, Arizona and Oregon.
Across the country, states add an average of 7.3 MW in capacity for each new data center planned. Texas, California and Arizona all exceed that standard, with 12.1, 8.4, and 11.4 MW of new capacity per data center, respectively.
As Virginia and Oregon are not represented among the top states for capacity additions, their average capacity additions per planned data center are much lower — 0.29 MW per data center in the former state and just 0.1 MW per data center in the latter.
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