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Texas has earned a reputation for grid reliability issues over the years, but renewable energy and storage have flipped the script. Although US President Donald Trump has put a crimp in the wind industry, the killer combo of solar-plus-storage is dominating new capacity additions in the US generally, and in Texas particularly. Utility watchers in the state are crediting the trend with enabling grid operators to keep the kilowatts flowing without relying on conservation warnings to avoid outages.
That’s something of a disconnect with Texas’s deep red political profile, but then again, who ever said grid reliability has to be a political football? Oh, wait…
Renewable Energy And The Texas Grid
In terms of grid reliability, Texas is a unique case. Back in the 1990’s lawmakers decided to “island” the state’s electricity grid from its neighbors. The move was intended to avoid federal oversight, but it also largely cut the state off from power-sharing with neighboring states in the event of grid emergencies, including hot-weather demand spikes as well as storm-related damage recovery, underscored by Winter Storm Uri in 2021.
