According to figures from energy think tank Ember, Türkiye will have added 2.1 GW of new solar capacity in the first half of 2026.
This figure brings the country’s cumulative capacity to approximately 26.9 GW, added to last year’s deployment figures. At the end of June, the number of solar power plants in Türkiye reached 41,000, compared to around 37,600 at the beginning of this year.
This year’s growth saw solar energy register its highest-ever monthly share of electricity generation in Türkiye last month. Data from EPİAŞ, the country’s energy exchange company, shows that solar energy was responsible 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 energy generation reached approximately 5 TWh in June, another record high.
Bahadır Sercan Gümüş, energy analyst for Ember, said pv magazine 1.8 GW of this year’s additions so far have come from unlicensed power plants. Such projects, designed for self-consumption up to 5 MW, make up the majority of Türkiye’s operational solar fleet.
“While Türkiye has a significant pipeline of licensed projects including [government] Thanks to tenders and storage-integrated factories, commissioning has remained slower than expected,” explains Gümüş. “I think captive projects will remain the main growth driver for the rest of the year as they are still being commissioned much faster than licensed projects. And at this stage I expect the current pace to continue for the rest of the year.”
Gümüş believes that the most important regulatory development in Türkiye during the first half of the year was the transition from monthly charging to hourly charging for self-consumption installations.
“While this is expected to reduce project revenues to some extent, the impact should be relatively limited,” he explains. “It is also worth noting that private consumers were exempt from the new regulations, which only apply to commercial and industrial consumers.”
Gümüş added that as distributed generation increases, network management becomes increasingly important, especially as Türkiye has introduced regulations that allow TEİAŞ to limit generation from unlicensed plants during periods of oversupply.
“Although this mechanism has rarely been used so far, I expect curtailment to become an increasingly common balancing tool, especially during periods of low demand and high renewable production,” Gümüş told us. pv magazine. “This will be an important indicator to monitor in the coming years.”
Türkiye’s first storage-integrated solar power plant became commercially operational in the first half of 2026, continued Gümüş, reaching 260 MW.
The storage reached a monthly charge-discharge volume of approximately 14 GWh in June, equivalent to approximately 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 vast project inventory to gradually come into use in 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 continues to offer large-scale renewable programs, most recently with plans to purchase 900 MW of solar power and 1.5 GW of wind power under its next Renewable Energy Resource Area (YEKA) program in October.
Gümüş said pv magazine It is understood that the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources could announce an increase in its target of 120 GW of solar and wind energy by 2035 at COP31, which will take place in Ankara in November.
“Achieving this goal would require an annual addition of more than 8 GW of solar and wind capacity,” Gümüş added. “Right now, Türkiye is still far from maintaining that level of commitment.”
