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[Arcelia-Martin-150x1] By Arcelia Martin February 10, 2025 Share this article * * * * * * Republish A view of Jupiter Power's battery storage complex in Houston. Credit: Jason Fochtman/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images A view of Jupiter Power's battery storage complex in Houston. Credit: Jason Fochtman/ Houston Chronicle via Getty Images Related * South Carolina Is Untapped Ground for Solar Energy Workers install one of the main power transformers for Silicon Ranch's solar farm in Georgetown County, S.C. Credit: Courtesy of Silicon Ranch * Rooftop Solar Was Having a Moment in Texas Before Beryl. What Happens Now? Texas ranks third in the country in electricity generation from small-scale solar, including rooftop solar, trailing California and Arizona. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images * On California's Central Coast, Battery Storage Is on the Ballot The shuttered power plant in Morro Bay, Calif., where Vistra Corp. has proposed a 600-megawatt battery storage project on a portion of the site. Credit: Vistra Corp. Share this article * * * * * * Republish Most Popular 1. Trump Executive Order Takes Back Funds to Help Low-Income Alabama Residents Pay Electric Bills 2. New Pipeline Will Bring More Permian Gas to Texas Industrial Corridor 3. Trump's New Energy Secretary Called Germany's Energy Transition 'Unreliable.' But He Missed All the Nuance As the market for renewables in Texas continues to strengthen and innovate, the power makeup of the state's electric grid is slated to keep shifting toward adding more renewables. Last year, solar and battery storage installation led capacity growth within Texas' electric grid, according to research from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas published in January. Texas added nearly 1,500 megawatts of battery storage to the grid's summer rated capacities in 2023. That figure almost tripled to 4,374 megawatts added in 2024, according to the report. Capacity from solar power added to the grid enjoyed a similar trajectory. In 2023, 4,570 megawatts were added to the grid, while in 2024, nearly 9,700 megawatts were added. Given that Texas has its own isolated energy grid, the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is responsible for managing the majority of energy for its residents. We're hiring! Please take a look at the new openings in our newsroom. See jobs Historically, ERCOT, which manages 90 percent of the state's power load, has primarily relied on natural gas. But other energy sources, like wind and solar, have played a critical role in offsetting high demand. ERCOT added 3,400 megawatts from natural gas power plants in 2024. That's after more than 1,000 megawatts of natural gas power were inactive within the grid from 2021 to 2023, according to Dallas Fed data. The capacity growth from solar and battery storage allowed the grid to manage another hot Texas summer in 2024, reported Garret Golding, an assistant vice president for energy program at the Dallas Fed. Battery storage is relatively new to ERCOT. One of the first battery power storage plants to be connected to ERCOT was in 2021, southeast of Dallas in Kaufman County. The 50-megawatt plant run by Enel, one of the largest renewable energy owners and operators in the country, was the first of Enel's 14 battery projects it has since developed across the state. The forecasted power demand in Texas from population growth and heavy load users like data centers, cryptocurrency mining and artificial intelligence, alongside the competitive market for batteries, is dictating the rising use of storage within ERCOT, said Randald Bartlett, a senior director of operations and management for battery energy storage systems at Enel North America. Texas' permitting processes and ability to develop has made it easier to add and build new capacity in comparison to other states with more laborious entryways, Bartlett said. Before, there wasn't really adequate criteria and evidence to forecast what batteries would contribute to the grid, ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said during a board of directors meeting on Tuesday. Now, the grid operator added battery contribution to its report forecasting future capacity, demand and reserves. Battery storage in the ERCOT grid has nearly doubled every year since 2021, Vegas said. At the end of 2024, there were nearly 10,000 megawatts from batteries within ERCOT. Vegas said the capacity from batteries made a significant difference in ERCOT during bridge hours, or the winter morning hours when the sun has yet to rise and in the evenings after the sun sets. "Batteries made a meaningful contribution to what those shoulder periods look like and how much scarcity we get into during these peak events," Vegas said when analyzing the grid's performance during recent winter storms. In the spring of 2024, Texas' installation of utility scale solar outpaced California's, and jumped from 1,900 megawatts in 2019 to over 20,000 megawatts in 2024. As a result, solar met nearly 50 percent of the state's peak power demand on some days. The state's quick deployment of utility scale solar didn't happen overnight. It started in 2005, when the legislature instructed the Public Utility Commission of Texas to create competitive renewable energy zones, where the state planned transmission lines to connect cities to renewable energy sources in west Texas. Initially, it was intended to capture wind power but was able to quickly include solar because of the existing infrastructure, said Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University and an author of Planning to Build Faster: A Solar Energy Case Study, published in October by the Roosevelt Institute. That forward-looking plan is often held up as a model renewable energy advocates and developers say the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission could implement across other regional transmission organizations, by requiring proactive planning and by creating rules of how to pay for transmission systems. As the state's grid continues to experience a rapid shift in the type of generation available to serve demand, the state's grid operator is looking to build a higher voltage transmission system, upgrading from 345-kilovolt lines to 765-kilovolt lines. In 2024, nearly 78 gigawatts of transmission-connected wind, solar and battery energy storage capacity was installed to the grid. And more than 102 gigawatts of transmission-connected renewable capacity is expected to be installed by the end of 2025, according to a December ERCOT report. It's that growth of both demand and renewables connected to the grid that's led ERCOT to ask the Public Utility Commission to consider upgrading the state's transmission system rather than expanding its existing one. The 765-kV lines would provide significant economic and reliability benefits to the ERCOT system, wrote Kristi Hobbs, ERCOT's vice president of system planning and weatherization, in the grid operator's submission of its regional transmission plans to the commission in late January. Regardless of which transmission plan is chosen, Hobbs wrote, the explosive growth projected throughout the next six years and beyond will require major public investment. About This Story Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That's because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it. That's not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can't afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We've built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible. Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action. Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don't already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places? Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference. Thank you, David Sassoon Founder and Publisher Vernon Loeb Executive Editor Share this article * * * * * * Republish [svg][Arcelia-Martin-300x300] Arcelia Martin Reporter, Texas Renewables Arcelia Martin is an award-winning journalist at Inside Climate News. She covers renewable energy in Texas from her base in Dallas. Before joining ICN in 2025, Arcelia was a staff writer at The Dallas Morning News and at The Tennessean. Originally from San Diego, California, she's a graduate of Gonzaga University and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. * @arcelitamartin * [email protected] Newsletters We deliver climate news to your inbox like nobody else. Every day or once a week, our original stories and digest of the web's top headlines deliver the full story, for free. * [ ] ICN Weekly * [ ] Inside Clean Energy * [ ] Today's Climate * [ ] Breaking News Email Address [ ] * [ ] I agree to the terms of service and privacy policy. [ ] [Sign Up] Related Workers install one of the main power transformers for Silicon Ranch's solar farm in Georgetown County, S.C. Credit: Courtesy of Silicon RanchWorkers install one of the main power transformers for Silicon Ranch's solar farm in Georgetown County, S.C. Credit: Courtesy of Silicon Ranch South Carolina Is Untapped Ground for Solar Energy By Carrie Klein Texas ranks third in the country in electricity generation from small-scale solar, including rooftop solar, trailing California and Arizona. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesTexas ranks third in the country in electricity generation from small-scale solar, including rooftop solar, trailing California and Arizona. Credit: Joe Raedle/ Getty Images Rooftop Solar Was Having a Moment in Texas Before Beryl. What Happens Now? By Dan Gearino The shuttered power plant in Morro Bay, Calif., where Vistra Corp. has proposed a 600-megawatt battery storage project on a portion of the site. Credit: Vistra Corp.The shuttered power plant in Morro Bay, Calif., where Vistra Corp. has proposed a 600-megawatt battery storage project on a portion of the site. Credit: Vistra Corp. On California's Central Coast, Battery Storage Is on the Ballot By Erin Rode Most Popular Steam rises from the James H. Miller Jr. Electric Generating Plant in the background of a home in Adamsville, Ala. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty ImagesSteam rises from the James H. Miller Jr. Electric Generating Plant in the background of a home in Adamsville, Ala. Credit: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images Trump Executive Order Takes Back Funds to Help Low-Income Alabama Residents Pay Electric Bills By Dennis Pillion A cargo ship passes the Cheniere Energy liquefied natural gas plant on Feb. 10 in Port Arthur, Texas. Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesA cargo ship passes the Cheniere Energy liquefied natural gas plant on Feb. 10 in Port Arthur, Texas. Credit: Brandon Bell/Getty Images New Pipeline Will Bring More Permian Gas to Texas Industrial Corridor By Dylan Baddour Chris Wright testifies before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of Energy on Jan. 15 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Ting Shen/AFP via Getty ImagesChris Wright testifies before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources during a hearing on his nomination to be Secretary of Energy on Jan. 15 in Washington, D.C. Credit: Ting Shen/AFP via Getty Images Trump's New Energy Secretary Called Germany's Energy Transition 'Unreliable.' But He Missed All the Nuance By Dan Gearino Clean Energy Maryland Environmental Leaders Slam Legislative Push for Gas-Powered Plants, Split Over Nuclear Energy Less than halfway through the legislative session, Maryland's future energy plans are igniting fierce debate. By Aman Azhar Former EPA Officials Blast Effort to Rescind Climate Funds, Calling It a Political 'Smokescreen' Trump Has Thrown a Wrench Into a National EV Charging Program. Can He Make It Disappear? Workers walk past a turbine inside the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby, Md. Credit: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty ImagesWorkers walk past a turbine inside the Calvert Cliffs nuclear power plant in Lusby, Md. Credit: Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post via Getty Images Keep Environmental Journalism Alive ICN provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Donate Now Inside Climate News * * * * * * Science * Politics * Justice & Health * Fossil Fuels * Clean Energy * Home * About * Contact Us * Whistleblowers * Privacy Policy * [svg][gximage2] * Charity NavigatorCharity Navigator Inside Climate News uses cookies. By continuing to use this site, you accept this policy. Learn More Accept