The take-away from this – while the federal government dribbles with bullshit that favors their benefactors state governments are driving to the hoop. As expected Texas and California are leading the innovation, but other states are quietly taking care of this business as well, because ***it’s good business***. This has nothing to do with saving the planet.
This shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to anyone at this point, as all growth in ERCOT has been through wind and solar for nearly 20 years now.
The only thing that changed much is that roughly around Covid, there was a transition away from adding mostly wind and toward adding mostly solar.
This was very interesting to see how stuff worked within ERCOT’s area/grid.
Initially operators only installed 2hr batteries, simply to meet the slowing supply of solar during the evening and growing supply during the morning, so that gas peaker plants wouldn’t be used as much.
Then they found out just how stupid cheap it was compared to base load gas generation too.
Now, batteries became 4hr batteries instead of 2hr batteries.
Now, they’re finding out, it is worth to have solar + battery with 6-8hr batteries, because how low maintenance and stupidly cheap, compared to gas, even CCGT, renewables are.
What is now also happening is, investors are interested in getting solar + batteries as much as possible.
Apparently, there was a discussion, by as early as 2030, any new announced investment in baseload CCGT would disappear and only those already underway or signed contracts would continue construction.
Beyond 2035, any and all new power generation in Texas is going to be replacing different fossil fuel based baseload generation with solar + wind + peaker plants only.
In fact, there is discussion going on, to have variable load industry (for example, aluminum refining) to be working in conjunction with available utility power, where if a couple days are too cloudy, industry takes a few days off, and when sunny and windy days are in, industry goes into overdrive. (Industries that rely of electrolysis process, for example caustic soda, Chlorine in different forms, Chlorates, ammonia, hydrocarbon products like ethylene, paper).
TCCE is avoiding mentioning ‘renewable’ energy, but mentions ‘variable’ cheap energy to different industries.
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The take-away from this – while the federal government dribbles with bullshit that favors their benefactors state governments are driving to the hoop. As expected Texas and California are leading the innovation, but other states are quietly taking care of this business as well, because ***it’s good business***. This has nothing to do with saving the planet.
This shouldn’t be that much of a surprise to anyone at this point, as all growth in ERCOT has been through wind and solar for nearly 20 years now.
[https://imgur.com/694muCz](https://imgur.com/694muCz)
The only thing that changed much is that roughly around Covid, there was a transition away from adding mostly wind and toward adding mostly solar.
This was very interesting to see how stuff worked within ERCOT’s area/grid.
Initially operators only installed 2hr batteries, simply to meet the slowing supply of solar during the evening and growing supply during the morning, so that gas peaker plants wouldn’t be used as much.
Then they found out just how stupid cheap it was compared to base load gas generation too.
Now, batteries became 4hr batteries instead of 2hr batteries.
Now, they’re finding out, it is worth to have solar + battery with 6-8hr batteries, because how low maintenance and stupidly cheap, compared to gas, even CCGT, renewables are.
What is now also happening is, investors are interested in getting solar + batteries as much as possible.
Apparently, there was a discussion, by as early as 2030, any new announced investment in baseload CCGT would disappear and only those already underway or signed contracts would continue construction.
Beyond 2035, any and all new power generation in Texas is going to be replacing different fossil fuel based baseload generation with solar + wind + peaker plants only.
In fact, there is discussion going on, to have variable load industry (for example, aluminum refining) to be working in conjunction with available utility power, where if a couple days are too cloudy, industry takes a few days off, and when sunny and windy days are in, industry goes into overdrive. (Industries that rely of electrolysis process, for example caustic soda, Chlorine in different forms, Chlorates, ammonia, hydrocarbon products like ethylene, paper).
TCCE is avoiding mentioning ‘renewable’ energy, but mentions ‘variable’ cheap energy to different industries.
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