Nearly $1 billion in new financing for Texas solar-plus-storage projects and a 365-MW Wyoming…

KEY DEVELOPMENTS

• Sunraycer Closes $901M Texas Solar-Storage Deal: The independent power producer secured financing for three solar-plus-battery projects in Texas, one of the largest renewable financing packages announced this year. Read More: Energy Storage News.
• Enbridge Builds 365-MW Wyoming Solar for Meta: The Cowboy Project near Cheyenne will pair solar generation with battery storage to power Meta data centers, expanding the partnership to roughly 1.6 GW of contracted capacity. Read More: Solar Power World.
• Dominion Seeks 3,000-MW Gas Plant Approval: The Virginia utility is pushing a massive new combined-cycle natural gas facility in Cumberland County, drawing sharp criticism from clean energy advocates who say the utility remains tethered to fossil fuels. Read More: Virginia Mercury.
• MISO Greenlights $1.6B Illinois Transmission Buildout: The grid operator selected a consortium to construct over 200 miles of new 765-kV transmission lines across Illinois, a major grid modernization investment to support renewable energy integration. Read More: Renewable Energy World.
• DTE Energy Issues 1-GW Michigan Renewables Tender: The Michigan utility's request for proposals seeks a combined gigawatt of solar and wind capacity, representing one of the largest single-state renewable procurement efforts in the Midwest. Read More: PV Tech.

Solar & Storage

Data center operators and the developers racing to power them are pumping billions into solar-plus-storage at a pace that shows no signs of slowing. Sunraycer Renewables closed a for three combined solar and battery storage projects in Texas — a state whose deregulated market and abundant solar resource have made it the nation's hottest battleground for utility-scale development. The deal ranks among the largest single renewable financing closings of 2026 and signals that capital markets remain bullish on paired solar-storage assets despite broader uncertainty around federal tax credits. Read More: $901 million financing package.

Meanwhile, in Wyoming, Enbridge is developing the , a 365-MW solar and battery energy storage facility near Cheyenne purpose-built to serve Meta's expanding constellation of data centers. The project pushes Enbridge's contracted capacity with Meta to approximately 1.6 GW across North America — a staggering figure that illustrates how a single hyperscale tech company can reshape regional energy markets. Wyoming, long associated with coal and natural gas, is increasingly attracting renewable energy developers drawn by cheap land, strong solar and wind resources, and proximity to western grid interconnections. Read More: Cowboy Project.

The scale of these projects dwarfs the municipal solar efforts that remain vital at the local level but operate in an entirely different universe of financing and ambition. In , the city has broken ground on a 4,255-panel solar installation across municipal facilities including a public works campus and parking lot. It's a modest project by megawatt standards, but significant for a mid-sized Pennsylvania city leveraging the state's Guaranteed Energy Savings Act to offset electricity costs without upfront capital risk. Projects like Reading's demonstrate that solar adoption is penetrating every tier of the market — from hyperscale data centers to city parking lots. Read More: Reading, Pennsylvania.

On the manufacturing side, in North Little Rock, Arkansas. The facility will combine SMA's German-manufactured inverters with U.S.-made transformers for utility-scale renewable energy projects, with the first major customer deliveries expected by early to mid-2026. The move reflects the industry's ongoing effort to onshore critical components of the solar supply chain, a priority that has gained urgency as foreign entity of concern (FEOC) compliance deadlines approach. In a related development, second-life battery maker for its repurposed battery storage systems, positioning itself as an alternative for developers seeking FEOC-compliant storage solutions. Read More: SMA America and CEP opened a new medium-voltage power station integration facility, Moment Energy claimed a "world first" safety certification.

ISO New England added a new variable to regional grid planning this week, releasing its. The finding was notably cautious: the grid operator sees only marginal winter reliability benefits from customer-sited batteries, with significant uncertainty about how these distributed assets will actually perform during the region's most stressed periods. The analysis is a reality check for advocates who have championed residential and commercial batteries as a grid reliability tool — at least in winter-peaking New England, the jury remains out. Read More: first 10-year forecast incorporating behind-the-meter battery storage.

Wind Energy

DTE Energy's is notable not only for its scale but for its technology-agnostic approach, seeking both solar and wind capacity. As this briefing reported Monday, the request for proposals targets projects interconnecting to the Michigan grid and represents one of the largest state-level renewable energy procurement rounds currently open in the Midwest. With the Trump administration maintaining its pause on federal wind permitting for projects on public lands and offshore, state-level procurement actions like DTE's take on outsized importance for keeping the wind industry's pipeline alive. Developers with shovel-ready onshore wind projects in Michigan will be watching this tender closely. Read More: 1-GW procurement tender in Michigan.

Policy & Markets

Virginia's energy politics grew more contentious Wednesday as two Dominion Energy stories collided. The utility is in Cumberland County, citing surging electricity demand driven substantially by data center expansion in Northern Virginia. Critics argue Dominion continues to lean on fossil fuel infrastructure even as clean alternatives become increasingly cost-competitive — a tension that has defined the utility's strategy for years and one that the pending NextEra acquisition, reported in recent briefings, could dramatically reshape. Read More: seeking regulatory approval for a 3,000-MW natural gas combined-cycle plant.

Simultaneously, environmental and historic preservation groups are , a 115-mile, 765-kV project spanning from Campbell County to Culpeper County designed to carry 6,600 MW of power to Northern Virginia's data center corridor. The opposition highlights a painful paradox of the energy transition: the same transmission infrastructure needed to deliver clean energy to demand centers faces siting resistance from groups that might otherwise support decarbonization goals. Virginia is becoming a case study in how insatiable data center power demand strains every dimension of energy planning — from generation mix to transmission routing to community relations. Read More: fighting Dominion's proposed Valley Link transmission line.

Further north valued at more than $1.6 billion, offers a more optimistic transmission story. The projects are designed to enhance the Midwestern grid's capacity to absorb renewable energy and move power across the region — precisely the kind of grid modernization that energy planners have said for years is essential to the clean energy transition. The Illinois projects are part of MISO's broader long-range transmission planning initiative, and their advancement suggests that at least in some regions, the institutional machinery for building big transmission is finally grinding forward. Read More: MISO's selection of a consortium to build over 200 miles of new 765-kV transmission across Illinois.

On the international manufacturing front, a joint venture between India's , explicitly targeting U.S. markets among others. The project reflects an ongoing effort by manufacturers to establish production in countries outside China that can avoid tariffs and trade restrictions, a strategy that has accelerated under the Trump administration's trade posture. Read More: Sahaj Solar and Clarion Investments plans a 750-MW solar module factory in the UAE.

LOOKING AHEAD

• NextEra-Dominion Merger Implications: As Dominion simultaneously pursues a 3,000-MW gas plant and faces transmission siting opposition, the pending NextEra acquisition — now several days into public scrutiny — could fundamentally alter both projects' trajectories. Watch for regulatory and political reactions in Richmond.
• FEOC Compliance Deadline Approaching: With Moment Energy touting safety certifications and supply chain reconfiguration accelerating, battery storage developers face critical decisions on sourcing as foreign entity of concern compliance requirements tighten. Expect more announcements from manufacturers positioning for this shift.
• DTE's 1-GW Michigan Tender Timeline: The response window for DTE Energy's massive solar and wind procurement will be closely watched as a barometer of developer appetite in the Midwest market and could set pricing benchmarks for the region's next wave of renewables.

THE BOTTOM LINE: Data center power demand is simultaneously driving record renewable energy investment and propping up new fossil fuel proposals, and the companies and regulators that determine which path wins — particularly in Virginia — will shape America's generation mix for decades.