It was such a pleasure to chat w/ Doug Lewin about how Texas is gearing up to put home solar+batteries to work for the grid. Catch the latest episode of Texas Power Podcast from RenewableEnergyWorld here: renewableenergyworld.com/podcasts/texas…

My latest is on Uvalde, secrecy, and Texas's once-proud open records law.

texasmonthly.com/news-politics/…

The latest episode of the Texas Power Podcast with Doug Lewin features Amy Heart, Sunrun's VP of policy.

They talk about Uri, resiliency, vehicle-to-grid, and the virtual power plant pilot that just got the green light in Texas.

Listen here: renewableenergyworld.com/podcasts/texas…

Not much has changed from Feb 2021 to today...it's not clear that reliability of fuel (namely gas and coal) will be any better for the power sector in the next winter storm compared with the last winter storm.

Staff also notes that #natgas storage is down and will likely stay low as LNG exports increase. This increases risk of outages in the summer.

Staff says LNG exports are likely contributing to high prices.

Staff answers: The Plaquemines, Golden Pass, and Corpus Christi projects should increase exports by 5.8bcfd (~40% more than today).

Note LNG exports are up significantly in recent years.

Rich Glick also points out how much consumer pain there will be from high #natgas prices, whether from direct use of gas in homes and buildings or from reliance on gas in the power system. He asks staff if they expect US LNG capacity to grow.

Speaking of winter readiness, Rich Glick says the Uri issues in Texas which caused 100s of deaths was not they didn't have enough generation capacity, they didn't have sufficient fuel & operational capacity.🎯
Feel like lots of people in Texas stil don't get that. #txlege

Toggling back and forth to @FERC winter readiness assessment. Stark to see the rise in natgas prices. #energytwitter

There will be a new #DER docket apparently. I'll post it once it's established. #energytwitter

There will be questions filed in the Aggregated DER docket (51603 or 53911 or both) on Monday for 'information gathering purposes.' All those who work on #DERs should be looking for those. #energytwitter #txenergy

They now turn to the staff memo which is below. More technical issues which are extremely important to implementation
interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/5160…

There's a discussion about how you define 'distributed' and how granular ERCOT can get, especially with little visibility for ERCOT (or the PUCT) into distribution grids. Eventually, probably soon, we're going to need that visibility... #txlege #txenergy