This huge Texas solar hub is nearly 1 GW, and it’s only half built
SkimNews Take
Rockhound's path from 1 GW to over 2 GW within a single site shows utility solar planning has moved to multi-gigawatt mega-site increments — a shift that makes individual project figures increasingly misleading as proxies for sector capacity.
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- Origis Energy brought another 500 MWdc of solar online at Rockhound in Ector County, West Texas, pushing the sprawling complex's operating capacity to nearly 1 GW.
- Rockhound now ranks among the largest renewable energy complexes in the US per Origis, though the site remains only about halfway built.
- Origis plans to add another 1 GW of solar and battery storage at Rockhound by 2029, bringing the full complex beyond 2 GW.
- Origis is pitching the next 1 GW phase specifically 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 giant Occidental, nutrition and materials company dsm-firmenich, and steel-wire manufacturer Bekaert.
- The next phase will broaden Rockhound beyond solar by adding energy storage capable of holding daytime generation and dispatching it to the grid when needed.
Why it matters: Origis is explicitly marketing the next 1 GW phase to data centers — the same hyperscalers already locking in West Texas renewable supply. Meta is already a Rockhound customer, and the developer's move to bundle co-location-ready solar with battery storage by 2029 positions the complex as a direct power play for AI-driven load growth in the region.
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