Beset by powerful storms and overheated by a dome of hot air, Texas endured a dangerous early heat wave this week that broke temperature records and strained the state’s independent power grid.
But the lights and air conditioning have remained throughout the state, largely because of an unlikely new reality in the nation’s premier oil and gas state: Texas is fast becoming a solar energy leader.
The amount of solar energy generated in Texas has doubled since the beginning of last year. And according to data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, it will roughly double again by the end of next year. The state already rivals California in the amount of power it gets from commercial solar farms, which are growing at a rapid pace throughout Texas, from the dry-baked farms of West Texas to the thriving suburbs of southwest Houston.
“Solar power currently produces 15 percent of total energy,” Joshua Rhodes, a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin, said on a sweltering day in the state capital last week, when a larger-than-normal share of the power came from the sun.
So far this year, about 7 percent of Texas electricity use has come from solar and 31 percent from wind.
The state’s increasing reliance on renewable energy has worried some Texas legislators, who are aware of the reliable production and revenue of oil and gas. “It’s certainly a surprise to some feathers,” said Dr. Rhodes.
Several bills passed by the Republican-dominated Senate in the spring contained provisions that would add new costs and regulations for the solar and wind industries and severely limit the number of new projects in the state, energy experts said. The bills were not passed before the legislative session ended last month, but the desire among many Republicans in the state for similar measures, and skepticism about renewable energy, remains strong.
“Wind power was the biggest infrastructure failure in Texas history,” said State Representative Jared Patterson, a conservative Republican from Dallas. on Twitter Wednesday. “It’s hot and it’s going to get hotter,” he wrote in an earlier tweet. “Solar energy helps, but make no mistake, the ninth largest economy in the world runs on natural gas.”
Power generation politics in Texas have undergone a rapid shift in recent years, punctuated by the power grid outage during a deadly winter storm in February 2021. The immediate reaction of many Republicans, including Governor Greg Abbott, was to blame frozen wind turbines, though later assessments found that the persistent cold caused widespread outages at natural gas-powered power stations.
June’s heat wave has reignited the grid debate as temperatures rise to dangerous levels. The border town of Del Rio reached 113 degrees on Tuesday, the highest temperature since records began more than a century ago. according to the National Weather Service. Then, on Wednesday, it was 115 degrees.
It was not an isolated event. The heat dome over Texas followed one that broke records in Puerto Rico early this month, and another that dried out central Canada and sparked disastrous wildfires. Scientists have warned that the planet’s steady warming is leading to an increase in the intensity and duration of heat waves.
Many Texans have become experts at tracking the ebb and flow of the state’s energy market, whose supply and demand curves are posted in near real-time by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT. If demand for energy threatens to outstrip supply, rolling blackouts can be a last resort.
The supply and demand curve came close earlier this week, prompting ERCOT to call on customers to voluntarily reduce their power consumption.
Paul Rasbury, owner of a flower shop outside of Fort Worth, said he’s already made it a habit to cut back on his energy use. “We turn up our temperature, put foil on the windows, close off certain rooms and pray,” he said. “Many prayers.”
The heat has been a punishment across the state, even for those accustomed to high temperatures. “It’s the humidity that bothers me,” said Kristen Triplett, standing in the sun in the Dallas suburbs on a day when the dense air felt like 114 degrees. “It’s like breathing water.”
Amid the heat wave, strong storms knocked out power for more than 100,000 customers in Texas and spawned at least two deadly tornadoes, killing three last week in Perryton, in the northern Panhandle, and at least four in the northern city on Wednesday from Texas. Matador.
But for much of the past week, the same downcast sun that endangered the lives of Texans also helped power the state.
“Renewable energy definitely saves the power grid and saves our wallets,” said Alison Silverstein, an independent energy consultant in Austin, referring to the impact on electricity prices.
Another test is scheduled for early next week, when more extreme heat is expected to push energy demand above previous record levels.
For years, the state’s Republican leadership embraced renewable energy. Former Governor Rick Perry helped establish Texas as the leading state for wind energy, backing a multibillion-dollar effort in 2005 to build transmission lines to carry power from the windy western part of the state to major population centers.
And Texas’ competitive energy market, long supported by state leaders, has allowed renewables to develop faster than many other states, first with wind farms and now, as the cost of solar technology has fallen, with vast fields of solar panels .
“As a state, we welcomed this, we worked hard to make it happen,” said state senator Nathan Johnson, a Democrat from Dallas, in his office at the Texas Capitol. “Now renewable energy has become a convenient scapegoat for the lack of reliability in our energy grid.”
Republican lawmakers have increasingly questioned the reliability of wind and solar energy — some refer to renewables as “unreliable” — as well as the level of subsidies offered to wind and solar projects.
“It seems like there’s a very uneven playing field in the market,” Senator Phil King said at a hearing this year. “If we take that playing field to the next level, will people build gas plants?”
Reliability concerns were echoed by Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who was concerned that Texas did not have enough available capacity in reserve to compensate for a situation where wind and solar underperformed on any given day.
“We don’t have enough controllable energy,” said Mr. Patrick last month, referring to power sources that can be turned on quickly in an emergency. Those sources can be batteries, but their capacity is still small. Typically, utilities turn to natural gas power plants.
Last month, the Texas Legislature approved a new $10 billion program primarily to boost construction of new natural gas plants. The amount includes $1.8 billion for local hospitals and other critical services to purchase emergency power generators, a facility originally proposed by Mr. Johnson.
Republicans also brought forward legislation that would have increased costs and regulations for renewable energy producers, including new fees for transmission and ancillary services, as well as new permit requirements and rules about where projects could be located.
The legislation failed, but only at the last minute, and not before industry concerns arose.
“It’s a huge irony,” said John Berger, the CEO of Sunnova Energy, a Houston-based home solar and battery company. “The growth in wind and solar is because Texas is more capitalist than many other states,” he said, “so the response of the so-called capitalists in Austin was socialism — letting the state invest $10 billion” in natural gas.
“It’s blatant protectionism and it’s not what made Texas great,” he added.
Texas still lags behind California in the amount of solar energy on the roofs of homes. But in solar park growth, it has quickly overtaken the Golden State.
Outside of Houston, in Fort Bend County, there are now six major solar parks, up from one in 2020.
“It’s being commissioned right now,” Joaquin Castillo, the CEO of Acciona Energy North America, said of the company’s new 1,500-acre solar farm in Fort Bend, which will begin commissioning this summer. “Texas has historically demonstrated a strong commitment to a free market,” Mr. Castillo said. “And it’s a fast-growing market in terms of demand.”
The change has been rapid and notable, especially in rural West Texas, where voters tend to be conservative, mostly in favor of oil and gas development – and increasingly benefit from the proliferation of solar energy.
“We’re better off financially,” said Joe Shuster, the Democratic district judge in Pecos County, north of Big Bend National Park. “I don’t know how many megawatts we put out, but it’s a lot.”
He said the sprawling county has long had oil and gas developments. Then came wind. Now solar. Mr Shuster said he had invited President Biden to visit the province and see how fossil fuels and renewables could be developed together.
“Everyone is throwing these stones at green energy,” said Mr. Shuster. “They can coexist. I firmly believe in that.”
The president never responded to his invitation.
Mary Bet Gahan contributed reporting from Dallas.
