As dangerous heat grips Texas, solar power and batteries keep the electric grid humming along
By Mose Buchele KUT 90.5 Updated
Batteries that store solar energy have boosted the Texas power grid this summer.
Michael Minasi/KUT News
With temperatures climbing over 100 in much of the state, the Texas electric grid set an all-time record for energy demand Tuesday.
Despite the heat wave, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas has yet to ask people to conserve electricity. That’s a big change from 2023, when extreme weather and fear of low power reserves prompted ERCOT to issue 11 requests for conservation through the year.
Grid operators and energy experts are pointing to the rapid growth of solar power and grid-scale batteries as key reasons why residents haven’t been asked to conserve this month.
“We’ve seen significant additions of energy storage resources, solar resources and wind resources, with a few additions also on the gas side,” Pablo Vegas, CEO of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, said at an ERCOT board meeting Tuesday. “All of that has helped to contribute to less scarcity conditions.”
In fact, the growth of some of those energy sources has been downright record-breaking.
As the sun and heat bore down, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday brought the top three days for solar power production in the history of the state grid, according to the website Gridstatus.io, which tracks the performance of regional electricity transmission systems.
On Sunday, the top day for solar production, Texas solar farms produced 20,832 megawatts of power. It’s worth noting that this number does not include energy produced by rooftop panels on homes and businesses.
According to ERCOT, 1 megawatt is enough to power about 250 homes at times of peak demand.
Texas also set new records Monday and Tuesday for the amount of power provided by big utility-scale batteries, something that could have made the difference between a normal day and a grid emergency.
“The previous storage record was shattered by 25%,” Doug Lewin, author of The Texas Energy and Power Newsletter, tweeted. We “almost certainly would have been rolling outages without it.”
The reason for the rapid uptick in solar and battery power on the state grid is pretty simple.
Energy demand has grown rapidly in Texas over the last few years, and frequent moments of energy scarcity have presented a business opportunity for solar farms and battery storage facilities that can quickly set up shop to fill the need.
Hot, sunny days — the very conditions that bring higher energy use — are also the conditions that produce solar power. That solar energy also can be used to fill large batteries that discharge power back to the grid when the sun sets over solar farms, but air conditioners are still running full blast.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Vegas pointed to other factors that have worked in the grid’s favor recently. Strong winds in the evening have brought wind power online as the sun goes down, and natural gas power plants have not suffered major breakdowns that could throw the grid into scarcity conditions.
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