Reading and Podcast Picks is a collection of what we’ve been reading and listening to over the last week or so about energy topics.
In addition to these R&P Picks, paid subscribers receive access to the full archives, Grid Roundups, and select episodes of the Energy Capital Podcast. Please subscribe today.
The Texas Grid Has Had a Boring Summer Thanks to Batteries | Heatmap News
This summer ERCOT issued zero conservation calls, compared with six in 2023. Massive discharge from batteries offered inexpensive supply when solar dropped and before wind picked up.
“We’re really seeing peak demand divorced from peak prices,” Joshua Rhodes, research scientist at the University of Texas, told me. This means that when demand is at its highest on a summer day — say around 4 p.m. this past Monday, when load was over 90 gigawatts — real-time prices were about $46 per megawatt-hour, according to Grid Status. At that time, natural gas made up about 42% of the grid and solar 36%. Compare that to the same time in 2023, when real-time prices were $85 per megawatt-hour during peak usage times and wind and solar combined made up around 20% of the grid.
As Abby Lestina, principal market analyst at Grid Status, put it to me, “The lack of pricing action would lead to the conclusion that the grid is more stable.”
Data Center Developers in Texas Plan Massive New Gas Power Projects | Inside Climate News
New data from Global Energy Monitor show Texas’ 12 largest planned power plants are all intended to run data centers, showing 50% growth in planned gas over the past six months.
“They must not take power from the Texas power grid,” Abbott said Sunday on ABC News. “They need to make sure that they are not disturbing neighborhoods or rural communities.”
GEM data accounts for 81.7 gigawatts of operating gas power generation, 99.4 GW in development and 22.4 GW recently announced.
Texas’ data center, transmission line pauses could be risky | The Texas Tribune
Industry leaders are continuing to react to the announcement of the pause on data center approval and ERCOT’s subsequent decision to pause its batch zero process.
Without the study, large-load users like data centers, along with traditional industry, do not know when they will be approved to receive power, creating delays in construction timelines. ERCOT officials testified to the House Committee on State Affairs on Wednesday that several projects have already dropped out of Batch Zero because of the delay.
Baker said the uncertainty goes beyond the data center industry because traditional manufacturers are stuck in the same queue with the hundreds of data centers that have disrupted ERCOT’s study process.
“It’s not going to be perfect, but (Batch Zero) is thoughtfully setting out how you narrow the funnel,” Baker said. “The key thing for all of these businesses is how to do that in a predictable and stable and credible way. Various wrenches being thrown in the process make that really hard to call it a predictable stable process.”
