[pchristensen]

For reference, those states cover 4.5x more land but only 20% more population (50M vs 40M) compared to California.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Texas consumes almost 2x as much electricity as California [1], and is almost 1/8th the entire US consumption, so population is not the most important factor.

[1] https://ksdata.ku.edu/ksdata/ksah/energy/18ener7.pdf

[dragonwriter]

More land with fewer people makes them even better for solar, though.