The article regards Senate Bill 6
- Click here for it.
And mentions the Texas Energy Fund.
- Click here for that.
- Click here for the article.
The stakes are high: Hundreds of people died during the 2021 blackouts during the coldest nights in a generation. Political futures ride on preventing another outage. Billions of consumer dollars will flow to those who twist the energy markets in their favor.
The trouble begins with defining the problem. How much electricity will we need, how many miles of new transmission lines are necessary and should the state dictate how electricity is generated?
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas warns that corporations have proposed adding enormous amounts of new load to the grid, potentially double the electricity used today. But no one knows how many crypto mines, artificial intelligence facilities, data centers and new oil and gas projects will get built, because 80% have historically dropped out before construction.
Even more difficult to answer is whether high electricity prices, improved technology or greater efficiency will reduce forecasted demand. Some proposed data centers expect to use as much electricity as Waco. New technologies could slash that demand in half, while next-generation solar panels could double output.
The biggest problem today is getting power to where it's needed. Wind and solar energy in South and West Texas often get wasted because there are not enough transmission lines. The Senate Business and Commerce Committee declared it would not turn away companies looking to tap into Texas’s grid.
“Texas is open for business … especially data centers and AI,” Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said.
The trick is maintaining reliability and reasonable consumer prices without ruining the climate.
King’s Senate Bill 6 is a gift to transmission companies such as CenterPoint, Oncor, AEP and TNMP. King has long pushed legislation favorable to these regulated utilities, even intervening to support CenterPoint’s disastrous $800 million investment in backup generators.
SB 6 would allow the PUC to authorize hundreds of miles of new power lines and pay for them with surcharges on consumer electricity bills. The bill would require data centers and some other large-load customers to pay for transmission costs, even if they have their own power plants and don’t use transmission lines. Oil and gas companies get special treatment, of course.
Large loads could no longer save money on transmission costs by cutting their usage during the four hottest days of the year, King said. Generators that want to take power off the competitive wholesale market and sell directly to large loads would have to ask transmission companies first.
Becuase SB 6 would shift costs onto large loads and limit generators’ options, lobbyists for manufacturers and generators are mobilizing to water it down. They want more money spent on generation and energy efficiency.
The Legislature created the Texas Energy Fund to subsidize natural gas power plants in 2023, and the PUC is trying to disburse $5 billion in low-interest loans. But generators are dropping out, the latest because it couldn’t find the necessary turbines. There is a global shortage of electric grid equipment.
PUC Chairman Thomas Gleeson told senators that companies are struggling to meet the fund’s December deadline and warned that new power plants will not be generating electricity until 2026-2029. He wants the authority to extend deadlines.
