Solar and Wind kept the Texas grid online in 2023's brutal summer heat [View all]

[Think. Again.]

Michelle Lewis | Sep 28 2023 - 5:00 am PT
Full Article: https://electrek.co/2023/09/28/solar-wind-texas-grid-summer-2023/

Utility-scale solar and wind kept the Texas grid online during 2023’s record-breaking summer heat, according to IEEFA – here’s how it breaks down.

Texas is a solar powerhouse

Researchers from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) crunched data from ERCOT, which operates the Texas grid. The researchers found that from June 15 through September 15 – Texas’s highest power-use period – solar provided more than 10% of the peak electric demand on 91 of those 93 days and averaged 13.8% across all 93 days. (And let’s note that peak electricity demand time isn’t even peak solar power generation time.)



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And it would be remiss to not include wind power generation during 2023’s sweltering summer, especially seeing how Texas is No. 1 in that clean energy capacity category. The analysts note that on August 10, 2023, wind power generation was 9,553 MW during the peak hour, compared with 7,369 MW on July 20, 2022. That’s an increase of 2,184 MW.

This means that wind and solar produced 4,539 MW more power than when the previous power demand record was set – so they supplied 85% of all the extra power needed.

And what’s more, the more than 3,500 MW of installed long-duration energy storage capacity also played a crucial role in keeping Texas’s lights on this past summer because the large batteries store clean energy generated during lower demand periods, and they discharge the power when it’s needed. ERCOT estimates that about 10,000 MW of battery storage capacity will come online commercially by the end of June 2024.

Full Article: https://electrek.co/2023/09/28/solar-wind-texas-grid-summer-2023/