Although the path of totality for Monday’s total solar eclipse was relatively narrow, the phenomenon darkened skies over much of the United States around 1:35 p.m. Monday.
The Blue Jay solar and storage plant in Iola.
Danny Lynch, site manager of the Blue Jay solar and storage plant in Iola.
A battery storage yard at the Blue Jay solar and storage plant in Iola.
Flaring at the Shell chemicals plant in Deer Park.
A flare in West Texas near Odessa.
A solar eclipse is the perfect reminder that almost all the energy humans rely on comes from the sun, even if some forms are older than others.
The food we eat, the oil and gas we burn and, increasingly, the electricity that flows from our outlets originated with a fusion reaction 93 million miles away. Today, electric grid operators worry about eclipses interrupting electricity the way ancient peoples worried about the gods taking away their source of food.
Texas is leading the way in converting sunlight directly into power, producing more than any other state. Still, our growing success in greening our grid comes with engineering and political challenges.
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For most of human history, carbon-based plants took up the sun’s rays, and humans consumed what was edible and burned what wasn’t for energy. Carbon levels in the atmosphere remained relatively balanced.
Humans started throwing off that balance by extracting the solar energy stored underground for millions of years in fossilized hydrocarbons. Burning millions of tons of coal, oil and natural gas released ancient carbon into the atmosphere, trapping more solar energy and heating the planet.
Fighting climate change requires humans to rebalance carbon levels.
Solar facilities generated more power than coal-fired power plants last month for the first time in Texas, the Energy Information Agency. Coal, one of the dirtiest forms of electricity generation, provided less than 10% of the state’s electricity, dropping every month from over 40% a decade ago.
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Meanwhile, solar is snowballing, from 0.6% of ERCOT’s demand in 2017 to more than 10% this year. Solar capacity is expected to double over the next two years, data from the grid operator Electric Reliability Council of Texas shows.
ERCOT set a record for renewable energy generation last week, providing 37,606 megawatts of electricity on Friday afternoon. Last month, clean energy met 73% of the state’s power demand.
All this renewable energy makes the natural gas industry nervous, and politicians worry about the grid collapsing in extreme weather. The challenge is not relying on clean energy most of the time, but how to pay for fossil fuel generation for when the moon blocks out the sun or other phenomena create a pinch.
This debate is mostly about money, not technology, and the resolution is critical for reliability and the climate.
Electricity demand in Texas will skyrocket over the next decade. Data center operators suggest they could add 40,000 megawatts of load by 2030 to the ERCOT system, which barely generated 87,000 megawatts last summer. Not all of those data centers will be built, but most will.
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Tech companies need additional facilities to meet the demand for artificial intelligence, which requires power-hungry computer servers. Grid operators fear high prices and brownouts if generation doesn’t keep up, while environmentalists worry greenhouse gas emissions will rise.
Thunder Said Energy, a data collection and research firm, estimates demand for AI will trigger a tripling in annual solar capacity additions. However, they also predict sales of combined-cycle gas turbines will double and boost demand for natural gas.
The Legislature and the Public Utility Commission of Texas are responsible for overseeing ERCOT and designing a wholesale electricity market that ensures reliability and affordability while minimizing environmental damage. The current market design is a mess.
Wind and solar energy are cheaper than natural gas and battery storage, but renewables do not perform on cold, still nights. They cannot ramp up on demand. Fossil fuel facilities are more expensive and pump carbon into the atmosphere.
The current market design doesn’t reward each energy source’s unique benefits and drawbacks.
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On a routine day, ERCOT predicts how much electricity it will need the next day, and generators bid to supply that power based on weather and equipment conditions. ERCOT starts with the cheapest electricity first and keeps buying until it can meet demand plus some reserve.
If the current competitive market remains unchanged, renewables will meet most of our needs, which is good. But if natural gas plants don’t operate often, they do not make a profit. Therefore, no corporation will build them, and they won’t be there if we need them.
Dozens of companies are working on clean energy storage to knock natural gas out of the market. Their success has the natural gas industry worried, which is why they give millions to Texas Republican politicians to tip the scale in fossil fuels’ favor.
The fight over market design at the PUCT is fierce but largely invisible. Hopefully, the eclipse will remind us where we get it, and how much we rely on it.
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Award-winning opinion writer Chris Tomlinson writes commentary about money, politics and life in Texas. Sign up for his “Tomlinson’s Take” newsletter at houstonhchronicle.com/tomlinsonnewsletter or expressnews.com/tomlinsonnewsletter.
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