In an article for Bloomberg Law, Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance's (United's state affiliate) Executive Director, Matthew Boms, highlights how advanced energy solutions—including wind, solar, battery storage, and demand response technologies—are bolstering the state's economy, increasing grid reliability, and helping meet rising load growth.
Texas’ efforts to maintain a resilient power grid in the face of rising demand and storm threats are being tested by the Trump administration’s attacks on renewable energy.
The Lone Star state is unique compared to others because it allowed the market to determine what resources to invest in, leading to extensive transmission lines transporting solar and wind energy. Those renewables are particularly abundant due to Texas’ extensive and sunny landscape, and have been supported by the state’s growth of battery storage.
“Texas is number one in wind and solar not by accident, but because we have the resources, the infrastructure, and the market design to make it happen,” said Matthew Boms, executive director of the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance under Advanced Energy United.
All of that is strained by President Donald Trump demanding the end of clean energy subsidies and restricting federal funding for renewables programs, provoking one Texas county to fight back in the courts.
Though these developments will affect Texas resources, ERCOT itself sets the state apart from others.
“ERCOT is mostly isolated from other grids in the country, and that means that Texas has more autonomy on how the market is designed and operated,” Boms said. This allows the state to avoid lengthy oversight processes from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates the interstate transmission of gas and electricity.
The state’s infrastructure also plays a big role.
“There was a really important transmission build out that happened about 20 years ago to connect remote wind and solar projects to the urban hubs in Texas,” Boms said. That “allowed billions of dollars in private investment to flow into Texas because the transmission was in place.”
“Federal policies will have an impact, but generally speaking, the industry is here to stay, and it’s really up to state leadership,” he said.
There have been recent attempts in the state legislature to pass bills that would add obstacles for renewables, but they didn’t go far.
One Republican-led bill, SB 819, would have added new permit requirements on wind and solar generating facilities, according to law firm K&L Gates.
Another, SB 715—also led by state Republicans—would have moved up the effective dates of new generation reliability requirements, according to S&P Global.
“There have been threats over the last few legislative sessions and some anti-renewable proposals, but luckily, none of those have passed,” Boms said.
Texas also invested in stronger weatherization following Winter Storm Uri in 2021, which left about 4.5 million Texans without electricity during extremely low temperatures.
FERC and the North American Electric Reliability Corp. released a report the same year finding that natural gas-fired units represented 58% of all generating units experiencing unplanned outages and other issues at that time. Wind made up 27%, coal made up 6%, and solar made up 2%.
“I think that these technologies—wind, solar, storage, demand response—they’re not experiments anymore,” Boms said. “They’re the backbone of the Texas grid and the economy.”
Read the full article here.