EGN NEWS DESK
All in all, “issues have labored fairly properly the best way they’re presupposed to,” mentioned Doug Lewin, president of the Texas-based power consultancy Stoic Energy. “It’s not overstating it in any respect to say that photo voltaic and storage has been determinative” in conserving the ERCOT grid regular via making an attempt warmth waves this yr.
In reality, Lewin wrote in his Texas Energy and Power Newsletter final week, it’s doubtless ERCOT would have needed to institute emergency measures absent the state’s staggering enhance in battery capability. Last week, ERCOT’s bodily responsive functionality, which is the capability for energy crops to spin up and prospects to close down at a second’s discover, had been approaching the edge that would require ERCOT to contemplate implementing rolling outages — however as a substitute, batteries swooped in and restored stability.
The Texas mannequin for a solar- and battery-backed grid
What makes this transformation extra noteworthy is that Texas has change into the main state for wind, photo voltaic, and now battery deployments with none state-level clean-energy mandates driving that deployment.
California additionally noticed huge development in solar energy and batteries ease the heat-wave-driven grid stresses that had led to rolling outages in August 2020 and emergency conservation measures in September 2022. But that development has been pushed by many years of state clean-energy coverage.
In Texas, in contrast, ERCOT’s extremely aggressive power-market construction and permissive grid interconnection guidelines have allowed clear sources to outcompete their fossil-fueled rivals. Texas topped the nation for wind energy in 2020, beat out California as the highest state for utility-scale photo voltaic in 2023, and should out-deploy California on utility-scale battery programs this yr.
All advised, zero-carbon energy from wind, photo voltaic, and nuclear made up 47 p.c of the facility delivered on ERCOT’s grid within the first quarter of 2024, up from 40 p.c all through 2023 — a shift pushed virtually fully by utility-scale photo voltaic and batteries economically outcompeting fossil-fueled energy crops.
Solar and batteries have continued to develop at the same time as Texas lawmakers final yr pushed via a sequence of insurance policies in help of fossil-fueled energy crops. Those insurance policies embrace a $5 billion low-interest mortgage program, which lately drew 72 purposes in search of $24 billion to construct as a lot as 38 gigawatts of recent fossil-gas-fired energy crops. They additionally embrace a plan to create a “efficiency credit score mechanism” that will pay gas-fired mills more cash for being out there throughout grid emergencies.
But gas-fired energy crops aren’t at all times capable of be out there throughout such emergencies. Solar and batteries stuffed in gaps in gas-fired era final spring, when a warmth wave coincided with many energy crops being offline for annual upkeep. And generally fossil-fueled energy crops fail to come back on-line or are compelled to cut back their energy output, notably at occasions of maximum warmth and excessive chilly, which might trigger operational issues.
Lewin famous that “thermal outages” — when coal, gasoline, and nuclear energy crops are unavailable or underperform — have been 20 p.c increased than ERCOT’s forecasts throughout final week’s warmth wave, and 30 p.c increased on August 20.
“Giving credit score the place it’s due, thermal energy plant outages have been usually decrease than final summer time,” he added — though that’s “type of damning with faint reward as a result of they have been too excessive final summer time.”
But the most important change from final summer time to this summer time is that Texas has elevated its photo voltaic manufacturing from 13 GW to 21 GW and has roughly doubled its battery capability over the previous 12 months. Last yr, the grid operators issued 11 such requires conservation, “in comparison with none this yr,” Lewin mentioned.
“The largest distinction is a complete lot extra photo voltaic and a complete lot extra storage.”
Gas-fired energy crops stay the biggest era useful resource on the ERCOT grid, and their backers say Texas wants much more of them to be out there to activate when the wind isn’t blowing and the solar isn’t shining. But for the state’s hottest summer time afternoons and evenings, the mixture of photo voltaic and batteries has proved to be a dependable, cheaper — and cleaner — various.
