Texas Senate passes bill requiring solar plants to provide power at night
thehill.com
thehill.com
Batteries would allow solar plants to provide power when the sun doesn't shine. And those are of course already being deployed in record numbers on the grid and very popular in combination with wind and solar setups. Any surplus of battery capacity would weaken the business case for operating gas plants and push those into the role of peaker plants.
Australia is a good benchmark of what that looks like. Several of their states run on solar and battery most of the time with coal/gas plants only switching on occasionally now.
Make a law demanding more power → power demand grows rapidly → new power supply is required here and now → companies prioritise whatever power source gets them there faster.
Record May Peak Demand Coming Wednesday: Grid Roundup #57 - https://www.douglewin.com/p/record-may-peak-demand-coming-we... - May 12th, 2025 ("ERCOT is forecasting a peak of over 84 gigawatts which would shatter the previous May record of 77 gigawatts and even threaten the all-time demand record. ERCOT expects plenty of extra capacity despite large thermal power plant outages; solar power is expected to deliver well over 20 gigawatts. Should various anti-energy bills (SB 715/HB 3356, SB 388, SB 819) become law, these kinds of events would almost certainly create energy emergencies")
Energy groups scrap Texas-backed projects as costs rise - https://www.ft.com/content/19a52438-b529-43a8-9a83-b2d680f3d... | https://archive.today/lsKf9 - May 12th, 2025
Texas Attempt to Kickstart New Gas-Fired Power Is Stumbling - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-05/texas-att... | https://archive.today/9jRPq - April 5th, 2025
Report on the Capacity, Demand and Reserves (CDR) in the ERCOT Region, 2025-2029 - https://www.ercot.com/files/docs/2025/02/12/CapacityDemandan... [pdf] - February 13th, 2025
I remember reading that transformers, especially the larger kinds, are on a 3+ year backorder.
Solar and wind farms are having to order all their parts like 5 years in advance cuz of it.
I'm in Australia and have absolutely zero clue this is a thing. Do you have any sources for this? As far as I was aware we only had a few batteries that didn't really last too long (at a grid scale).
I guess the reason for this bill is stability of the grid. I'm not saying if this makes this bill good or bad, I'm not enough of an expert into electrical grids.
The original bill: https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/89R/billtext/pdf/SB00715S....
Sounds quite dirigiste to me. Cf Germany, which allows separate operators to connect batteries to the grid (and there's a stampede). The battery operators plan to buy cheap wind power at night or cheap sun at midday, and they are not constrained to use one source of power the way Texas requires.
But it also says you can do it by subcontracting with an offsite battery operator.
That's a much more optimistic view of Texas legislators than I believe in.
Demand is lower at night anyway and forces these plants to invest in appropriate energy storage solutions. If we leave this problem up to the rest of the grid we will have even bigger political fights.
There has been no conclusive post mortem, the issue is still under investigation[1], this is a blog post by a tech company, not an authoritative agency with findings, basically speculation being used as a marketing article...
This article[2] also calls out the rumor mill about renewables being a cause:
> Political groups such as the far-right VOX – which has historically pushed back against climate action such as the expansion of renewables – also pointed to the blackout as evidence of “the importance of a balanced energy mix”.
> However, others rejected this suggestion, with EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen telling Bloomberg that the blackout could not be pinned on a “specific source of energy”:
> “As far as we know, there was nothing unusual about the sources of energy supplying electricity to the system yesterday. So the causes of the blackout cannot be reduced to a specific source of energy, for instance renewables.”
> Others have sought to highlight that, while it was possible solar power was involved in the initial frequency event, this does not mean that it was ultimately the cause of the blackout.
It's all inconclusive and the narrative that solar is the culprit is being pushed by anti-renewables, let's wait until there's an official conclusion to the investigation instead of peddling bullshit.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43970583
[1] https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/01/iberian-black-out-ents...
[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-ab...
Uh, the cause of the issue has not been identified.
>> If passed by the House, state S.B. 715 would require all renewable projects — even existing ones — to buy backup power, largely from coal or gas plants.
If it compelled the renewable projects to buy from a coal plant, that might be an issue. But if the choice is buy from a coal plant OR invest in storage so that the amoutn of energy delivered can be consistent across the day, that’s probably a great outcome.
Yes, they can't yet* supply enough power for overnight coverage. However, multiple grids have batteries that provide four hours of supply at grid scale.
Watch the percentage of power running overnight on batteries. Over time, you'll see an increasing blend of wind power plus batteries with a decreasing amount of gas-powered turbines.
Are you new to Politics or something?
A better title: "Texas Senate passes bill requiring renewables to designate backup power to reduce their volatility"
I also clicked on the references given in the article, and they don't exactly say what the article claims.
For example: "A study by the Texas Association of Business (TAB) found that the legislation would cost the state $5.2 billion more per year — and cost individual consumers $225 more."
That's not what the link says, the link says that reducing the growth of renewables would do that. The article pretends that this legislation would reduce renewables, but it does not actually prove that claim.
The Hill usually has higher quality work, this article is garbage.
Why? The goal of this law is a stable grid, it's not an environmental law. And your law makes no sense, they should buy renewable power in order to sell it? Why do I need an extra middleman?
The actual purpose of this law is that if you are putting unable power on the grid it's your job to make it stable.
The grid operator is responsible for the stability of the entire thing, but this law is saying that each individual supplier must be responsible for the stability of their personal part.
I suspect as the proportion of renewables increases more and more grids will require something like this.
Due to several factors such as surging demand from AI data centers and manufacturers operating at full capacity, there is a natural gas turbine shortage. Without a natural gas turbine, you can’t add a solar farm to the grid. AND, without enough new gas turbines, Texas may be reluctant to add large, predominant scale solar because they can't guarantee reliability during low solar output.
So adding a battery backup requirement or use of natural gas for example may seem counter intuitive but Texas has a duty to provide reliable and redundant power to its customers
The outage had nothing to do with solar though, no idea why you brought it up.
“ Two sudden disconnections at solar generation sites in southwestern Spain triggered a rapid frequency drop. Historically, fossil fuel plants would have provided inertia to dampen the swing and limit disruption. But that day, renewables made up nearly 80% of supply. The energy feeding the grid was clean, but inflexible.”
Texas has chosen to add a non renewable backup option as a reasonable choice. The article there advocates for a complex battery option that is more decentralized from the main power grid. That’s one option but it requires deploying millions of dollars in batteries and things like natural gas turbines simply perform better with today’s technology in these situations.
This article [1] also calls out the rumor mill about renewables being a cause:
> Political groups such as the far-right VOX – which has historically pushed back against climate action such as the expansion of renewables – also pointed to the blackout as evidence of “the importance of a balanced energy mix”.
> However, others rejected this suggestion, with EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen telling Bloomberg that the blackout could not be pinned on a “specific source of energy”:
> “As far as we know, there was nothing unusual about the sources of energy supplying electricity to the system yesterday. So the causes of the blackout cannot be reduced to a specific source of energy, for instance renewables.”
> Others have sought to highlight that, while it was possible solar power was involved in the initial frequency event, this does not mean that it was ultimately the cause of the blackout.
It's all inconclusive and the narrative that solar is the culprit is being pushed by anti-renewables, let's wait until there's an official conclusion to the investigation instead of peddling bullshit.
[0] https://www.entsoe.eu/news/2025/05/01/iberian-black-out-ents...
[1] https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-what-we-do-and-do-not-know-ab...