Origis Energy's Rockhound solar hub hits 1 GW at halfway mark
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- Origis Energy brought three new phases totaling 500 MWdc online in Ector County, joining the adjacent Swift Air Solar projects to push the Rockhound complex's operating capacity to nearly 1 GW
- Rockhound now ranks among the largest renewable energy complexes in the US, according to Origis, but remains only about halfway built
- Origis plans to add another 1 GW of solar capacity paired with battery storage by 2029, bringing the full complex beyond 2 GW and is pitching that next phase to data centers for co-location and long-term corporate power contracts
- Rockhound already supplies power under long-term contracts with Meta, oil and gas company Occidental, nutrition and materials firm dsm-firmenich, and steel-wire manufacturer Bekaert
- Origis cited tech companies' surging electricity demand, plus West Texas's abundant land, strong solar resources, and existing energy infrastructure, as the rationale for scaling the site
Why it matters: The next 1 GW at Rockhound is being marketed directly to data centers, meaning a major chunk of new US solar capacity at the site will be locked into tech-sector offtake rather than flowing to the open Texas grid — a concrete signal of how hyperscaler power demand is reshaping siting decisions for utility-scale renewables.
