Texas Senate passes bill requiring solar plants to provide power at night

[Eugene]

Source: The Hill

Texas Senate passes bill requiring solar plants to provide power at night

by Saul Elbein - 05/09/25 3:39 PM ET

The Texas Senate passed a bill Thursday that leading business interests fear would lead to an age of expensive power and rolling blackouts.

If passed by the House, state S.B. 715 would require all renewable projects — even existing ones — to buy backup power, largely from coal or gas plants.

This would require solar plants in particular to buy backup power to “match their output at night — a time when no one expects them to produce energy and when demand is typically at its lowest anyway,” consultant and energy expert Doug Lewin wrote in an April analysis.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank that is one of the bill’s most prominent advocates, argues that it is necessary to make up for the “volatility” of wind and solar power.

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Read more: https://thehill.com/policy/equilibrium-sustainability/5292792-texas-senate-bill-power-cost/

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Note: The fossil fuels-funded Texas Public Policy Foundation is a Project 2025 contributor.

[walkingman]

1. Texas legislature is corrupt, ignorant, and own by the fossil-fuel industry.

[progree]

2. Two other bills that the Texas Senate recently passed (both are the same kind of idiocy)

The bill follows two prior bills passed by the Texas Senate that target the state’s nation-leading renewables industry. S.B. 388 requires every new megawatt of renewables to be matched by a megawatt of new gas power — effectively throttling the growth of the state electric production in an environment where new gas turbines are in short supply.

. . . renewables, which take about half the time of gas plants to be added to the grid. . . .

And S.B. 819, championed by suburban Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, would use “the police power of the state” to restrict landowners from leasing their property to wind and solar companies. [[that's different than the usual meaning of "states rights". Freedom! --Progree]]

The fate of all three now lies in the Texas House, where pro-renewable voices among the GOP were winnowed amid the Republican primary purges of 2024,

As for the cost of the bill in the OP --

A study by the Texas Association of Business (TAB) found that the legislation would cost the state $5.2 billion more per year — and cost individual consumers $225 more. In addition to more expensive power, the TAB study found, Texans would also get a higher risk of blackouts in the heat of summer or in future ice storms.