AUSTIN — The head of Texas’ electric grid and the state’s top energy regulator said Monday that industrial-scale batteries are still in their early phases, despite rapid growth.
The growth of battery storage’s prominence as part of ERCOT, the state’s stand-alone power grid, has been nearly unrivaled in the United States. In the past two years, Texas’ capacity to store electricity at large-scale battery stations has almost quadrupled.
Industrial-scale batteries can now power at least 3.7 million homes. They are regularly releasing power into the grid during times of high demand and charging up when power demand and prices are low.
Renewable energy advocates see batteries as a complementary to weather-dependent wind and solar power, and many battery storage developments are now being built alongside renewable power generation facilities in hopes that together they can provide power 24 hours a day, regardless of whether the sun is shining or the wind is blowing.
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The perception of unreliability has been the biggest political headwind for renewable energy.
Lawmakers in the Texas Legislature have generally preferred legislative proposals that favor natural gas power plants for their ability to start generating power at the flip of a switch.
During the Trump administration, the federal government has also rolled back tax incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act that made it cheaper to build renewables and batteries.
American Clean Power Association CEO Jason Grumet said industry insiders feel when the state Legislature convenes every two years that the industry begins a biennial “fight for our lives” despite batteries’ growth in Texas.
ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas said Monday at a battery storage industry event in Austin that lawmakers’ intentions are “misunderstood.”
“It’s grounded in good intentions,” Vegas said, adding that his refrain since he was hired to run ERCOT in the aftermath of the 2021 deadly winter freeze was an all-of-the-above approach to creating more power resources on the grid.
Public Utility Commission Chairman Thomas Gleeson sounded a similar tone, telling industry officials the state is not transitioning from fossil fuel to clean energy, despite emerging as a nationwide leader in utility-scale solar and wind power.
“In Texas, we’re not interested in an energy transition,” Gleeson said. “We’re in energy expansion.”
The development of natural gas power plants has lagged solar and batteries in recent years, though there have been some new plants announced in recent months.
But that is dwarfed by the number of battery storage developments that have taken initial steps at ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission to connect to the grid. If just one-third of the proposed battery projects in ERCOT’s interconnection queue are built, it would quintuple the storage capacity of batteries on the grid.
“I’m heartened to see that, because the economic incentives are aligned for battery companies to actually bring their technology to the state,” Gleeson said.
But even that level of development would not match conservative projections for demand growth that show the state’s thirst for electricity doubling in the next five years, driven in part by the construction of hyperscaled data centers. OpenAI’s Stargate datacenter in Abilene, for instance, is planned to have a power demand profile on par with the generating capacity of the entire state of Nebraska.
Vegas, the head of ERCOT, said batteries’ place on the grid will continue to evolve.
“We’re the very start of this journey,” Vegas said. “Especially the batteries, I think we’re only in the first or second inning.”