Texas should be careful what they ask for; they might get it. Their intention is obviously to protect their gas exploitation industry and sell lots of gas. But the net result might actually be making gas power plants more redundant faster.
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.
Hamuko · 5h ago
I was just thinking that this might result in more renewables, as the article states how renewable plants are faster to get online and have been almost all of new production.
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.
initramfs · 8m ago
every mom and pop store that is open between the hours of 8 am and 5pm understands the double standard of requiring a utility to operate 24/7. It's not like it's the city that never sleeps. Who needs a solar plant to provide power 24/7?
sublinear · 6h ago
I think this is a good idea, and attacks the problem of high availability at the correct abstraction layer.
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.
docdeek · 6h ago
That was my impression of the description of the bill, too. This part:
>> 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.
firesteelrain · 5h ago
A lot of people miss the fact that coal or natural gas can provide on demand power much faster to customers when solar plants go dormant at night.
standardUser · 5h ago
Much faster than what? Than battery storage?
firesteelrain · 5h ago
Gas turbines can run continuously for hours or even days at full output. Batteries are only few hours at most. Batteries can’t provide this kind of power demand at grid scale.
bastawhiz · 12s ago
Thankfully nighttime doesn't last for days
watwut · 6h ago
Demand being lower at night implies it makes sense to demand solar production at night?
firesteelrain · 5h ago
No, it is is because Texas is adding redundancy requirements. Full investment in solar is dangerous - just look at Spain and Portugal recently. Texas has a duty to provide reliable power to its customers.
renox · 1h ago
> just look at Spain and Portugal recently
Uh, the cause of the issue has not been identified.
piva00 · 4h ago
I will basically copy-paste my other reply[0] to you because you are spreading a narrative that is potentially wrong (and at the very least quite misleading):
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.
You people will twist themselves into pretzels to protect just about anything if it comes from conservatives, isnt it?
firesteelrain · 1h ago
I am looking at this from a logical perspective. It has nothing to do with conservatism.
Arnt · 4h ago
That's not what Texas demands. Rather, it demands being able to produce above average at night, which is far above what the usage patterns require.
energy123 · 6h ago
Texas lawmakers realized their free market approach led to renewables dominating, and had to put their government thumb on the scales.
No comments yet
misja111 · 5h ago
I'm reading the original bill, I can't find anywhere where it says that solar plants have to buy backup power from gas or coal plants. It says they have to be able to operate for 24h above seasonal average, "when called upon". Using batteries for this is explicitly allowed.
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.
24h is a lot of battery power, and above average level, too, which means that the average level has to be throttled below what the sun and panels allow.
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.
hackeraccount · 7m ago
Would it be 24h? Wouldn't it be more like 12 hours?
eastabrooka · 6h ago
I don't see a problem in this, Renewables do put strain on the grid and atleast legislating for this means they have to put some stationary storage batteries in, and that helps smooth peak demand etc.
energy123 · 6h ago
The problem is it's a disingenuous and malicious non-solution by ideologues, not a real solution to a real problem. The solution already exists and is already in place in ERCOT. The pricing mechanism.
eastabrooka · 5h ago
> it's a disingenuous and malicious non-solution by ideologues,
Are you new to Politics or something?
timbit42 · 6m ago
Politics isn't as bad as Texas in many places, states, and countries.
fifticon · 6h ago
no worries, they will also pass a law requiring the sun to shine at night, so it all works out.
Cyphase · 6h ago
We'll just unroll the Earth and lay it out flat, as it should be.
brnt · 6h ago
Flat Earth is a fact in Texas schools, isnt it?
ars · 6h ago
This title is click bait, and the article is poorly written.
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.
sph · 5h ago
Thank you, and post flagged for political clickragebait which we get too much of already in here.
Terr_ · 6h ago
Digging up the vote [0] it seems to be party-line: 20 Republicans in favor, 11 Democrats against.
can't help but to think that somebody has bribed them to pass the stupid bill, yea? oh, sorry, "lobbied" is the correct word for it. anyway, what's with texas and fossil fuel love-story? seems they don't want to get separated.
rzz3 · 5h ago
I don’t understand why we’re not going to nuclear.
timbit42 · 4m ago
It takes a long time to build them. By the time they are built, the economics for them will be much worse than they already are relative to solar, wind, and hydro.
atwrk · 4h ago
Because it is outrageously expensive compared to renewables, you can't turn it off at night, it takes literally decades to build, and nobody wants it near where they live.
energy123 · 2h ago
And even once you have it, you still need storage and/or overbuilding, because demand itself is idiosyncratic.
davkan · 5h ago
Nobody wants a plant in their backyard, nobody wants to store the waste in their state, the investment takes the length of career to pay off.
AndrewDucker · 4h ago
Too expensive
firesteelrain · 5h ago
Recently there was a Spain/Portugal outage that caused loss of 60% of those countries overall power needs and those countries relied on solar. The high penetration of renewables without adequate storage or backup solutions made the grid more susceptible to frequency fluctuations. Texas has harsh weather and in recent years there has been issues with the resiliency of their power grid. Texas has issues with hail storms that damage the solar panel grid.
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
piva00 · 5h ago
> Recently there was a Spain/Portugal outage that caused loss of 60% of those countries overall power needs and those countries relied on solar.
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.
piva00 · 4h ago
There has been no conclusive post mortem, the issue is still under investigation[0], 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 [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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
Uh, the cause of the issue has not been identified.
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...
No comments yet
No comments yet
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.
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.
[0] https://legiscan.com/TX/rollcall/SB715/id/1568696
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...