Türkiye added 2.1 GW of new solar capacity during the first half of 2026, according to figures from energy think tank Ember.

The figure takes the country’s cumulative capacity to around 26.9 GW when adding to last year’s deployment figures. By the end of June, the number of solar plants in Türkiye had exceeded 41,000, up from around 37,600 at the beginning of the year.

This year’s growth helped solar record its highest-ever monthly share of electricity generation in Türkiye last month. Data from the country’s energy exchange company EPİAŞ shows solar accounted for 16.5% of electricity generation in June, setting a new all-time monthly record and surpassing the previous record of 16.1% in June 2025. Solar generation reached approximately 5 TWh during June, another all-time high.

Bahadır Sercan Gümüş, energy analyst for Ember, told pv magazine 1.8 GW of this year’s additions so far come from unlicensed power plants. Such projects, designed for self-consumption up to a 5 MW, make up the majority of Türkiye’s operational solar fleet.

“Although Türkiye has a substantial pipeline of licensed projects, including [government] tenders and storage-integrated plants, commissioning has remained slower than expected,” Gümüş explained. “I believe self-consumption projects will remain the main growth driver for the rest of the year, as they continue to be commissioned much faster than licensed projects. And at this stage, I expect the current pace to continue through the remainder of the year.”

Gümüş believes the most significant regulatory development in Türkiye during the first half of the year was the transition from monthly netting to hourly netting for self-consumption plants.

“While this is expected to reduce project revenues to some extent, the impact should be relatively limited,” he explained. “It is also worth noting that residential consumers were exempt from the new regulation, which applies only to commercial and industrial consumers.”

Gümüş added that as distributed generation expands, grid management is becoming increasingly important, particularly as Türkiye introduced regulations allowing TEİAŞ to curtail generation from unlicensed plants during periods of excess supply. 

“Although this mechanism has rarely been used so far, I expect curtailment to become a more common balancing tool, particularly during periods of low demand and high renewable output,” Gümüş told pv magazine. “This will be an important indicator to monitor in the coming years.”

Türkiye’s first storage-integrated solar plant began commercial operations during the first half of 2026, Gümüş continued, reaching 260 MW.

Storage reached a monthly charge-discharge volume of approximately 14 GWh in June which corresponds to about 0.05% of monthly consumption. Gümüş said that while storage has not yet reached a level that would impact the market, he expects Türkiye’s huge project stock to be commissioned gradually over the coming years, albeit at a slow pace.

“If the rollout of storage-integrated projects accelerates, Türkiye could match, or even exceed, last year’s installation levels, although we have not yet seen that acceleration,” he said.

The Turkish government is continuing to tender large-scale renewable programs, most recently with plans to procure 900 MW of solar and 1.5 GW of wind under its next Renewable Energy Resource Area (YEKA) program in October.

Gümüş told pv magazine it is understood the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources may announce an increase to its 120 GW solar and wind target for 2035 during COP31, scheduled to take place in Ankara in November.

“Achieving this target would require annual additions of more than 8 GW of solar and wind capacity,” Gümüş added. “At the moment, Türkiye is still some distance from sustaining that level of deployment.”