Renewables = 80% of new generation capacity in Texas

From IEEFA:

More than 80% of the new power generation capacity expected to come into service in 2019 in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region will be either wind- or solar-driven, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.

Overall, the region, which encompasses most of the state of Texas including major load centers such as Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth, is expected to see 10,440 MW of new capacity go online in 2019, with 6,934 MW, or 66.4%, from wind and another 1,706 MW, or 16.3%, from solar. Gas-fired capacity using combined-cycle and gas-turbine technologies totals 1,770 MW and accounts for 17.0% of the scheduled additions.

Unlike in 2018, when more than 4,000 MW of coal-fired capacity was retired, no retirements are scheduled for the year. One coal-fired plant, however, is being mothballed indefinitely.

This is a pattern which is being repeated everywhere.  For example in Pakistan.  And Japan and Turkey.  And in Texas, solar is exploding:

United States: Texas’ solar market is about to catch fire

With more than 5 GW of approved solar projects in the ERCOT grid, Texas is getting ready for a major boom in its utility-scale solar market. 

In December, the volume of solar applications in ERCOT’s interconnection queue exceeded those of wind for the first time, at over 40 GWac. But it didn’t stop there, and the January report from ERCOT published earlier this month finds a stunning 43.5 GWac of solar projects, most of which are in West Texas with some in the Panhandle and South Texas, and even a few on the Gulf Coast.

But as any developer will tell you, not all of that is going to get built. In fact, most of it won’t. Which leaves a question that is hard to answer: How much will?

Perhaps even more important than the 43.5 GWac figure in the interconnection queue is that 5,081 MW of these projects have interconnection agreements. Furthermore, with the exception of a mammoth 495 MW project in Borden County, all of these projects are scheduled to come online in 2019 and 2020.

However, ERCOT lists only about half of these, or 2,657 MW, as having “financial security and notice to proceed”. But of these, 11 projects totaling 1,232 MW are expected to come online during 2019 and five totaling 717 MW have met the requirements for being included in planning models.

If even the 1,232 MWac of projects which have financing and notice to proceed come online, this will be the first year that Texas installs more than 1 GW of solar. But it is important to note that the interconnection queue is an evolving document, and that more projects are likely to be approved for interconnection, reach financial close and get built this year. As such, the 1,232 MW figure can be considered a starting number for what is likely to go online over the course of the year, and by any measure Texas’ solar market is about to see a major boom.

[Read more here]

Remember, a grid with mixed supply from wind and solar needs less storage than one exclusively dominated by one or the other.  And both wind and solar, now, are cheap as chips.