Texas' grid the best 'it's ever been' as state seeks to boost generation: Abbott

Texas Governor Greg Abbott touted the state's continuing efforts to strengthen its power grid to meet growing energy needs at the Texas Electricity Policy Summit on April 9 in Houston, telling a group of attendees that "the grid truly is better than it's ever been."

Abbott, who delivered a 15-minute keynote address before a crowd of 120-plus energy, manufacturing and business leaders at Rice University, talked up the state's plans to facilitate the addition of more power plants and nuclear facilities, double battery power within the next year and implement the Texas Energy Fund to add more generation to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid.

The focus on strengthening ERCOT comes as Texas continues to address rising demand brought on by a booming economy that's attracting more businesses and people to the state. According to estimates from the US Census Bureau, Texas' population grew by more than 473,000 people between July 2022 and July 2023, the largest population spike of any US state during the same period.

"Bottom line is, much more power is going to be needed in the future," Abbott said. "And we work on adding that power every single day."

Battery power set to double

Abbott's visit to Houston was preceded by a stop in Maxwell in central Texas, where he spoke at a groundbreaking ceremony for a two-unit Lower Colorado River Authority peaker power plant expected to add 380 MW to the grid. The first unit is already under construction and expected online in 2025, and the second is set to enter service in 2026. When operating at full capacity, the plant will be able to power more than 100,000 homes during periods of peak demand.

Abbott said during the summit that efforts to build more plants such as these are vital to helping Texas meet surging power demand, particularly with the coming build-out of more electric vehicle charging stations and the growing needs of artificial intelligence data centers across the state. The governor said the state has added 3,820 MW of dispatchable power to the grid within the past 12 months and plans to add 7,300 MW to the grid in the next year.

Abbott also said the state intends to double the amount of battery power on the grid within a year, going from about 5,800 MW currently to about 12,000 MW in April 2025.

"Altogether of what has been added and what will be added in a 12-month time period is enough to power hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of homes across the state," he said.

Energy fund seen as growth engine

The governor saved some of his final remarks for the Texas Energy Fund, which was created through a constitutional amendment passed overwhelmingly by voters in November. The $10 billion fund will provide low-interest loans for firms to develop power generation, with $7.2 billion specifically earmarked for natural gas-fired power plants, in an effort to improve grid reliability and mitigate some of the issues ERCOT experienced during the deadly mid-February 2021 winter storm that cut power to more than 4 million customers in the grid, some for days .

Abbott did not provide many specifics on the implementation of the TEF but said his administration was working to ease the permitting process for companies seeking to build the sort of plants eligible for funding.

"That fund is going to jump-start the building of even more dispatchable power in Texas," Abbott said. "And to ensure that these new dispatchable power plants are built as fast as possible, earlier today I instructed the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to expedite the permitting process to make sure they will prioritize these new power generators, especially those that are tapping into the fund that we've allocated, to make sure they will get done as quickly as possible."

Kenneth Medlock, energy studies director at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, said after Abbott's remarks that ERCOT is now certainly stronger than it was before February 2021 and legislation passed since the storm has addressed critical issues, such as communication failures and critical load designations. However, he stressed the importance of not resting on that initial progress.

"There's still a lot of work to do, and the fact the Texas economy continues to grow, population continues to grow, demand's going to continue to grow," Medlock said. "With growth and load, we've got to keep expanding everything we're doing. We've got to grow the generation base, we've got to install more dispatchable generation, and we've got a lot of work in front of us, without a doubt, to maintain a reliable system."