> Texas is the only state in the lower 48 that has no major connections to neighboring power grids. That means growing energy demand in Texas must be met by new power generation in Texas.
> "Texas didn't [build solar farms and battery storage] for an energy transition reason at all," says Rhodes, "We just made it easy to build things here. And so people started building things here."
It's hard for me to reconcile the criticism of Texas's market structure with the fact that they seem to add more (clean) generation capacity than any other state.
Is it as simple as: Their state is growing very fast (both people and electricity per person due to datacenters) leading to supply/demand forecasting difficulty and mismatches?
TX generates 138% more electricity in 2023 vs. 2009 [1]. By contrast CA generated 5% less electricity in 2023 vs. 2009 [2] (roughly same for any 2 years around those start and stop years).
I do wish this topic were treated less politically and more pragmatically. At this point everyone seems to agree we need more electricity in the future with less carbon intensity and so far, TX is one of the few states actually achieving it at scale.
> "Texas didn't [build solar farms and battery storage] for an energy transition reason at all," says Rhodes, "We just made it easy to build things here. And so people started building things here."
It's hard for me to reconcile the criticism of Texas's market structure with the fact that they seem to add more (clean) generation capacity than any other state.
Is it as simple as: Their state is growing very fast (both people and electricity per person due to datacenters) leading to supply/demand forecasting difficulty and mismatches?
TX generates 138% more electricity in 2023 vs. 2009 [1]. By contrast CA generated 5% less electricity in 2023 vs. 2009 [2] (roughly same for any 2 years around those start and stop years).
I do wish this topic were treated less politically and more pragmatically. At this point everyone seems to agree we need more electricity in the future with less carbon intensity and so far, TX is one of the few states actually achieving it at scale.
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/#/topic/0?agg=2... [2] https://www.energy.ca.gov/media/7311