"The Texas Senate passed a bill Thursday that leading business interests fear would lead to an age of expensive power and rolling blackouts.
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.
This would require solar plants in particular to buy backup power to “match their output at night — a time when no one expects them to produce energy and when demand is typically at its lowest anyway,” consultant and energy expert Doug Lewin wrote in an April analysis"
The Hill tries to make backup energy as something that brings volatility and rolling blackouts, which makes no sense. Implying they believe that wind and solar should go without backup, and consistent generation at night, which is basically extra capacity. If you are going to need to roll out back up generation in the future, might as well do it now, instead of later. This does a couple of things for the Texas GOP goal of increasing reliability, it increases the responsibility on solar and wind producers to address their own volatility, instead of dumping the volatility on ancillary services, which get less revenue, because of their off-time, accommodating wind and solar. By forcing solar, and wind producers to buy capacity from what would most think as only backup generation, the Legislature wants to force wind, and solar to participate in 24 hour production. A mandate like this makes room for reliable energy rollout, basically more support for natural gas, and presumably batteries, instead of just crowding out the preferred energy types.
You don’t understand Texas’s powergrid. It’s a free market, there is little planning or foresight. Large scale power production is provided by hundreds, possibly thousands, of independent producers who can turn their production on as they see fit, in other words, when it’s profitable. Therefore backup generation for solar is already present. If there’s not enough, then the market will dictate how much to build and where. That’s how it works in Texas.
Free market, they can deal with it. Yes, it’s a dumb system, but thems the rules in Texas.
This bill is clearly designed to stifle renewable production in favor of fossil energy. Requiring one mode of production to have or purchase backup generation isn’t fair in the current market system. Do away with the market system first before putting a thumb on the scale.
Also preferred energy types? Energy types with the least amount of emissions should be preferred. Not gas, not coal, not oil, or whatever else Texas wants to burn.
Per the text of the bill solar producers could just claim maintenance every night.
Ha, hey ERCOT, we gotta clean these panels every night, takes 15 hours.
Edit: I would appreciate if the downvotes engaged a little. I just checked the bill and, based on my reading, it would allow you to contract with a battery bank or you could just say you have planned maintenance every night.
Original comment: As unpopular as your comment may be, it is likely correct.
Right now solar is so cheap during the day that they can bid a negative price on the market during the day making sure they are part of the mix. Here is a great article/video on it from Practical Engineer
Obviously solar doesn’t actually cost negative money to run, so this will require them to bid a more realistic price that will, in the long run, facilitate an actual conversion to green energy.