As Texas Power Demand Surges, Solar, Wind and Storage Carry the Load (electrek.co) 101
Texas's electricity demand has surged to record highs in 2025 but renewable energy is meeting the challenge. According to new data from the Energy Information Administration, solar output has quadrupled since 2021, wind continues steady growth, and battery storage is increasingly stabilizing the grid during evening peaks. Electrek reports: ERCOT, which supplies power to about 90% of the state, saw demand jump 5% year-over-year to 372 terawatt hours (TWh) -- a 23% increase since 2021. No other major US grid has grown faster over the past year. [...] The biggest growth story in Texas power generation is solar. Utility-scale solar plants produced 45 TWh from January through September, up 50% from 2024 and nearly four times what they generated in 2021 (11 TWh). Wind power also continued to climb, producing 87 TWh through September -- a 4% increase from last year and 36% more than in 2021.
Together, wind and solar supplied 36% of ERCOT's total electricity over those nine months. Solar, in particular, has transformed Texas's daytime energy mix. From June to September, ERCOT solar farms generated an average of 24 gigawatts (GW) between noon and 1 pm -- double the midday output from 2023. That growth has pushed down natural gas use at midday from 50% of the mix in 2023 to 37% this year. The report notes that while natural gas is still Texas's dominant power source, it isn't growing like it used to. "Gas comprised 43% of ERCOT's generation mix during the first nine months of 2025, down from 47% in the first nine months of 2023 and 2024," reports Electrek.
Together, wind and solar supplied 36% of ERCOT's total electricity over those nine months. Solar, in particular, has transformed Texas's daytime energy mix. From June to September, ERCOT solar farms generated an average of 24 gigawatts (GW) between noon and 1 pm -- double the midday output from 2023. That growth has pushed down natural gas use at midday from 50% of the mix in 2023 to 37% this year. The report notes that while natural gas is still Texas's dominant power source, it isn't growing like it used to. "Gas comprised 43% of ERCOT's generation mix during the first nine months of 2025, down from 47% in the first nine months of 2023 and 2024," reports Electrek.
Horseshit (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
"So don't act like solar, wind and storage have some how cleaned up Texas."
Who's acting like that? It's a Red state, CO2 emissions are mandatory.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They legit tried, then their grid collapsed 4 times in a single season.
more fucking around and finding out by the facts don't care about your feelings brigade.
Lessons were learned in 2021 Re:Horseshit (Score:3, Informative)
The Texas grid came very close to collapsing* in the winter storm of 2021. It hasn't had a widespread, long-lasting failure since.
* in this case, collapsing means either a grid-wide outage requiring a "black start" or the grid suffering major physical damage that results in weeks-long outages or rolling blackouts. Texas's was able to survive without serioius physical damage or having to do a grid-wide "black start" by heavy load shedding. Much of the load shedding was planned/announced hours in advance,
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Wind and solar are profitable, and profit is the most patriotic thing possible.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Texas is slowly moving in the right direction. Imagine how much farther it could have moved if conservatives didn't have a jihad against reality.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nuke bugs need to give it a rest (Score:5, Interesting)
Nuclear is not coming online in the US. Your choices now are: Renewables or frequent regional outages. Given the state of our infrastructure, I think a mix of both is in the future.
The USA has 21 proposed reactors. 0 under construction, 0 planned. It is unlikely any of the proposed projects could go online before the mid- to late 2030's.
It's obvious to you and to me that nuclear is the most capable and scalable and should be our primary choice moving forward.
Nuclear fission as an energy source is a dead end in America, and that has little to do with nuclear hysteria and more to do with infrastructure funding, NIMBY, and wealth inequality. (our bad politics are why we cannot have nice things)
But the reality is that we (the US) won't be taking the best option. So it's time to discuss secondary and tertiary options.
Re: Nuke bugs need to give it a rest (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
The USA has 21 proposed reactors. 0 under construction, 0 planned. It is unlikely any of the proposed projects could go online before the mid- to late 2030's.
I am curious, do you know how many GW's that would be? I assume that "reactors" may actually mean plants that might have more than one reactor there. Still what would we expect there, if all were built? 3 GWe per each seems like it's probably an overestimate, so that would be 63 GWe. Not really all that much compared to our potential power demands. Also, all of this is just for electricity generation. If we really want to deal with emissions, we need to deal with Primary power and not just electrical genera
Re: (Score:2)
No, nuclear is limited in that it's non-dispatchable power. It's like solar and wind in the opposite way. While solar and wind are erratic, nuclear is stable. But both are non-dispatchable in that they cannot adapt to changing loads easily. Solar and wind are obvious in that they can only produce power with the sun and wind, and can only produce up to what the sun and wind are producin
Re:Horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
However much you think a nuclear plant costs, double it and add a few years to the schedule.
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Enlighten us, which projects were delivered on time and under budget?
The opposition party in Australia was unable to convince voters of their plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in establishing a nuclear industry, cynical of any financials emitted from US thinktanks.
Completely dead in the water.
Re:Horseshit (Score:4, Insightful)
"How much is it worth to avoid global warming?"
This is supposed to be an argument for US nuclear generation. The argument, not quite explicitly made, must be that building nuclear would lower or prevent global warming. Thus, however expensive it may be, its cheaper than the alternative, which is higher emissions and higher temperatures driven by them.
But building nuclear in the US cannot have the slightest effect on global warming. It will not affect US emissions materially, but that's not the only problem. Even if it did, it would not affect global emissions. The US economy is too small a percent of the global economy, US emissions are too small a percentage of global emissions, and power generation is too small a percentage of US emissions,
It is a common feature of these discussions on /. -- people assume that unilateral action by the US in some area will have an effect on global emissions and thus the climate. But the alleged effect is never quantified.
If people want to make this argument they should do something they never do: quantify it. Just say what the US is emitting now, then how much it would be given the proposed program, in this case a nuclear build out. Then say what global emissions are now, and what they will be after the buildout. And then say what difference that will make to global warming.
The answer is, negligible effects. But prove me wrong, put up some numbers. At the moment the argument is literary criticism when what is needed is engineering logic.
Re:Horseshit (Score:4, Insightful)
A single sector as an example.
It is harvest time in the upper half of the united states, the average farmer burns about 5.2KG of fossils fuels to produce 50KG of corn from opening the field to the local sale point. Another 2.5KG of fossil fuels is burnt to deliver it to the ports, and another half KG to deliver to international markets, before similar amounts of energy are used on transport to get it to foreign end users.
For that effort the farmer is rewarded the cash ebullient of 9KG of fuel, with that they have to upgrade and maintain their land, pay taxes, machines and pay themselves for the effort. 83% of farming is direct or indirect fuel costs (fertilizer is just another fuel), add another 10 for source materials and seed IP that is also largely past fuel consumption. Some of the most productive food growing in the united states is counted as per capita fuel consumption by Americans when 15% is shipped away as grain and another 5% to 10% is shipped away as manufactured products. If there were a more efficient way to produce food, the corporate farmers would have already adopted it.
Think as you grow up and learn how the world works, you will find when people are paying the energy bill vs paying themselves they do typically make their efforts as efficient as they can. You will also figure out the marketing, logistics and local packaging has more to do with end user cost than what is immediately visible.
Re: (Score:2)
"For that effort the farmer is rewarded the cash ebullient of 9KG of fuel, with that they have to upgrade and maintain their land, pay taxes, machines and pay themselves for the effort"
Given that an ever larger number of farms or farmland have been acquired or are controlled by large corporations, many US farmers today are modern sharecroppers
Re: (Score:2)
we've had 40 years to take action on global warming and we could have made significant, meaningful progress even without nuclear but instead globally built 1000s of inefficient coal plants and kept old dirty ones running, shortening the lives of 100s of millions.
While impressive advances in fuel efficiency in ICE had been made since the 1970s we then built ever larger & heavier vehicles some capable of speed & acceleration that would shame most storied muscle cars yet we spend as time as ever idling
Re: (Score:2)
You are too generous there.
Horseshit assumptions. (Score:2)
However much you think a nuclear plant costs, double it and add a few years to the schedule.
That was in the NIMBY excuse era. The meltdown fearmongering era. We live in the idicratic era of Chernobyl scuba divers now.
Now watch two tiny reasons fire up the next dozen nuclear plants within a decade. Reasons that didn’t even exist last century. Tell me why you think the immeasurable amount of Greed behind crypto mining and AI, won’t build them. Red tape will burn like a blowtorch to toilet paper. Billions stand by, ready to buy palm and skid grease by the tanker truck full.
Re: (Score:3)
Also again, as context for people who want to build their own opinion: In Germany, CO2 emissions are substantially declining with the replacement of coal and lignite by renewables: https://energy-charts.info/cha... [energy-charts.info]
One can complain that it is not yet as low as in France, but it is also not surprising that an ongoing transition that is not completed yet is not yet at the same level as a transition that was completed decades ago. Making this point would be rather idiotic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not yet haha!
They're not yet at the level of the UK either. They are over 10 times that of France. The "not yet" is doing some very heavy lifting. I'm not going to cheer on Germany for being so far a bit less shit than they were.
Re: (Score:2)
And do these plans for nuclear in Texas also include a plan for where in Texas to bury the waste? Or are they burying their heads up their butts as they usually do for external costs that they can socialize?
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny how the biggest risk to the German grid is french reactors going down...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Lie, lies and more lies.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That is all you have? How pathetic. Well, what can you expect from a serial liar.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Horseshit (Score:4)
Let's hope that Texas does a better job of managing nukes than they have of managing their grid.
Re: Horseshit (Score:2)
Same as lots of US states (Score:3)
Texas is about the same or lower emissions than 40 other US states.
Re: (Score:2)
If it is the amount of CO2 emitted, then let's talk about the biggest polluters in the USA,
- the federal government
- the state and local governments
This is the same misguided discussion of how energy usage and pollution from it is held in isolation from other aspects of the products produced and exported to the USA states. Texas could drastically cut its energy usage and pollution by simply not producing products to reduce the cost of living in other USA states.
Texas produces 42% of the total oil productio
California (Score:2)
Same way that California could reduce pollution by producing food only for itself instead of the rest of the USA
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Go away, troll. Because France's electricity is not only highly subsidized, they can't even produce enough electricity to meet their own needs at least 2 months out of every year! [rte-france.com]
Nuclear, because it cannot load-follow cost effectively, needs either fossil fuels or grid storage, just like renewables.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Just for others (I know you not care about the truth or even about having a balanced discussion where arguments are acknowledged): The declared goal of the subsidies for renewables in Germany was to create an economy of scale to bring prices down, which was extremely successful. In contrast, cost for nuclear in western countries never went down and instead increased over time despite subsidies.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course it's highly subsidized it's a state owned enterprise. Nuclear should be subsidized, or really more accurately, owned by the public. Is the 19 g number accurate? France also did a record amount of electricity exports in 2024. [rte-france.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Subsidizing things that are for the general benefit to all makes a lot of sense. Especially for infrastructure that enhances business, commerce, and national security.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, renewables proponent trying to call out other energy sources on... I kid you not, LOL: subsidies and intermittent supply. Talk about noticing a speck in someone else's eye while ignoring a beam in one's own.
That's a pretty odd thing to say. Renewables receive considerably less in subsidies than either nuclear or fossil fuels. Some of these subsidies are direct and some of them are indirect. For example, sometimes consumers might say "I thought renewables were supposed to be cheaper, why is my power bill so high!" and the answer (aside from the fact that only part of the bill is for supply costs and often more of it is for delivery costs) is that they are still paying for failed nuclear projects and will be for
Re: (Score:2)
No, nuclear is not just like renewables. Yes, a system primarily using nuclear does require supplementing to meet peak demand by gas or coal or a combination.
But, unlike wind and solar, nuclear produces continuous predictable power. The gas generation can be brought in to meet predictable peaks in demand. Wind is neither continuous nor predictable. Solar is predictable but vanishes predictably in winter and at night. And neither one has peaks of production that coincide with peaks in demand.
You want
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
TFA doesn't claim Texas is getting cleaned up. It's just saying renewables are a fast growing source of energy in Texas. Be careful to hurt yourself with that jerking knee.
Re: (Score:2)
That number for France is a direct lie, and you have been told so several times, in part with proof.
At this time you are just a parrot that pushes the same lies time and again, no matter what.
Re: (Score:2)
That number for France is a direct lie, and you have been told so several times, in part with proof.
It says 19 g right there you DF [electricitymaps.com]
Re: (Score:2)
It looks as if Texas ERCOT is at at 397 g CO2 per kWh [electricitymaps.com]. So don't act like solar, wind and storage have some how cleaned up Texas. Just for reference France is 19 g CO2 per kWh.
But weren't you making a big deal in another thread about France at 19 and Germany at 283 and how it proved that renewables had failed in Germany? I will note that 397 is 114 more than 283. Almost like you're looking at a snapshot of an ongoing process and not examining the change over time. Basically, Germany is on a path to getting CO2 emissions per kWh down in the same range as France before any nuclear plants they started today would ever be completed. As for Texas, they have reduced their CO2 emissions
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Let me ask this simple question then. What do you think the CO2 per kWh of electricity produced will be in Germany next year? In five years? In ten years? Let's see if you're at all capable of admitting that the numbers you keep touting are just a snapshot and actually thinking critically about this instead of being dogmatic.
Re: (Score:1)
What do you think the CO2 per kWh of electricity produced will be in Germany next year?
280±10
In five years?
250±10
In ten years?
200±10
And that's assuming they actually replace their coal with methane.
Slow and steady is not going to get us there.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, at least you're willing to admit that the level will go down. Of course, you seem to only be willing to attribute it to replacement of coal burning with natural gas burning, while completely ignoring the contribution of renewables. Let's be real here, however, and look at the last ten years. Currently, renewables are about 60% of the electricity mix of Germany, with nuclear negligible if any at all and fossil fuels very slightly below 40%. Over the last ten years, renewables have grown a little over 3
Home Oil Wells (Score:3)
Re: Home Oil Wells (Score:2)
Can I order my own from Amazon or do they sell them at their local hardware store?
Re: (Score:2)
Nah (Score:2)
Money is winning [ourworldindata.org], .
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That is exactly the way I look at trump, as a cheap bully, that shits his pants when he gets beat down, only It was his daddy who told him to lie and deny, cheat and steal, and gave him all of his money.
Let me guess, you know all this because Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow, and the ladies on the view said it was true?
For example, Reagan in the late 80s recorded a radio speech explaining why he was imposing high tariffs on Japan, a Canadian province took that speech, cut out the parts they didn't like, and tried to sway public and political opinion on trade discussions between Canada and the US with a $75M ad buy on US television. (Remember when Democrats were all upset about "deep fakes", "selectivel
Early 1900s east Texas oil rigs Re:Home Oil Wells (Score:1)
Doesn't everyone in Texas (outside of Austin) have a personal backyard oil well and refinery?
Don't know about a refinery in every backyard, but there were lots of oil wells per square mile in parts of East Texas during the early oil boom:
Beaumont's Spindletop early 20th century oil wells [authentictexas.com]
Re: (Score:1)
Wow, 100 years ago, Texas looked different. Amazing.
It's a win win (Score:2)
So either it's Texas's pro free market low tax environment which means renewables are the market choice (which is true) or if it's say Texas subsidies tipping the scale which means renewables are an effective and economic way to add capacity because why else would the Texas legislature and governor do this?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
wasn't Pickens trying to scarf up as much water rights as he could, like a real life Bond villain?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sorry, what was the villainous act T Boone Pickins did? Simply identifying the value of water and trying to control it doesn't make one a villain...
Re: (Score:2)
His plan was to take as much as 65 billion gallons per year from the Ogalalla Aquifer and pump it to cities like Dallas.
That would have had a serious negative impact on farming & drinking water for people who live in that area of the High Plains
Re: (Score:2)
Why be a sucker and burn fossil fuels yourself, when you can sell them to other suckers?
You mean like Norway, which is sitting on what may be the largest oil reserves in the world, yet their (heavily subsidized) EV sales account for like 99%+ of new car sales?
Re: (Score:2)
>> because why else would the Texas legislature and governor do this?
The Texas legislature and governor are rabidly anti-renewables, mainly because they have been eating the lunch of their dirty energy donors.
https://thehill.com/policy/ene... [thehill.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Your link is about anti-renewable bills dying in Texas gov't - how does that support the statement "The Texas legislature and governor are rabidly anti-renewables"?
By killing "anti-renewable" legislation, doesn't that mean they are, you know, if not pro-renewables at least not "rabidly" anti-renewable?
You can be against subsidies for something and still be pro the thing others want to subsidize. You can support the idea of EVs, but be against giving car buyers $7,500 of taxpayer money to buy one. You can be
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe you didn't read it closely. "While all three bills passed the state Senate over the last month, leadership in the House declined to put them on a crucial calendar" where they might very well have passed. What did happen though, is that oil and gas are now getting subsidies that wind and solar are not.
"After decades of support for renewable energy made Texas able to produce more wind power than any other state, its political leaders have turned against wind and solar."
"renewable energy got so big that
Re: (Score:2)
Uh, "Carries the load"? (Score:3)
Together, wind and solar supplied 36% of ERCOT's total electricity over those nine months.
No, it "shared the load" and did so by supplying just over one-third of the needs of the state.
If you and I shared a project and I did 36% of the work and you did 64%, would you say that I "carried the load"? I think not.
It's great that Texas is shifting its generation sources, folding ever more solar, wind, and storage into the mix, but let's not heap false praise on wind, solar, and storage...
36% wind/solar restrains the governor (Score:2)
As much as Abbott would like to drill baby drill, he knows he can't handicap wind and solar too much, or it would bring down the grid. That's a kind of tipping point I can appreciate.
The irony (Score:2)
Texas, with its well-deserved Big Oil reputation, also happens to be *by far* the nation's leader in wind energy, with 3x more than any other state. And it will soon be #1 in solar as well. This is much to the chagrin of many in the state government, but at this point, the horse has left the barn, it's too late to clamp down and stop the rush into renewables. The very lack of regulation is what has allowed wind and solar to flourish in the state.
ERCOT Graphs (Score:1)