Greentech Media highlighted Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance's (TAEBA) new report showing that allowing more distributed energy resources (DERs) to participate in the competitive energy market would save Texans $5.47 billion, quoting TAEBA's Managing Director Suzanne Bertin. Read excerpts below and the entire GTM2 (sub. req.) piece here. 

Texas, the country’s most competitive and freewheeling energy market, is also a major player in renewable energy, from its already mighty wind sector to its rapidly growing utility-scale solar sector. But for distributed energy resources like rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries, grid-responsive electric vehicles or advanced energy management controls for homes and buildings, it’s a far less friendly market...

In terms of grid costs, the report projects that Texas utilities spent $40.6 billion on T&D infrastructure in the past 10 years. Taking the natural growth of DERs into account could allow Texas utilities to shave up to $344 million per year, or about $2.6 billion over 10 years, from what they’d otherwise have to spend on new or upgraded grid infrastructure over the next 10 years, for an 8.5 percent decrease in annual T&D costs, the report claims. 

And in terms of market impacts, the report suggests that just 1,000 megawatts of DER resources, or roughly 1.2 percent of the state’s peak load, could help decrease electricity costs by about $3 billion over the next 10 years — if those DERs are capable of easing the conditions that lead to Texas’s market price spikes. Added together, that’s $5.47 billion over 10 years, or $456 per household, according to the report. While those projections do rely on certain assumptions about the types of DERs being deployed, “some of the assumptions are pretty conservative,” Suzanne Bertin, managing director of Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance (TAEBA), said in a Thursday interview...

TAEBA, which includes big renewables buyers Google and Microsoft and two dozen renewable energy developers, energy technology vendors and efficiency contractors, has been promoting more DER-friendly policies for the state. “The results of this study provide support for pursuing those policy options,” Bertin said...

Read the entire GTM2 (sub. req.) piece here.