Name: Wind overtook coal as a power source in Texas last year
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Wind overtook coal as a power source in Texas last year

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Editor's Note: This story originally published in 2021.More electricity in Texas was generated from wind power than coal last year, another sign of the rapid emergence of renewable energy in the state.Since 2015, the amount of wind-generated electricity has more than doubled in Texas, and last year 23 percent of the state’s power came from wind turbines.About 18 percent of electricity generated in 2020 came from coal, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas reports.Five years ago, wind contributed less than 12 percent of the state’s power, while 28 percent of electricity generated in 2015 came from coal.Solar power made up just over 2 percent of the total electricity generated in the state last year, but adoption of solar has increased exponentially in Texas. Five years ago, solar contributed .001 percent of the state’s electricity.On ExpressNews.com:While coal has declined and renewables are swiftly growing, natural gas remains king among energy sources in Texas. Last year, 46 percent of the state’s power came from natural gas-fired plants. In 2015, natural gas contributed 48 percent of the electricity in Texas.But as a share of the state’s power sources, natural gas may have reached its peak, said Carey King, assistant director of the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.As more solar farms come online, the introduction of additional battery storage onto Texas’ electric grid likely will supplant some of the electricity generated by natural gas, he said.Battery storage capacity in Texas is expected to grow more than , from 215 megawatts of available battery storage last year up to over 1,500 by the end of this year, ERCOT says.And more solar power is coming online this year as well. ERCOT projects there will be three times the amount of solar power generation in Texas this year compared with 2020.With more battery storage capacity, solar farm operators can charge massive batteries when the sun is highest during the day, and then discharge the batteries to power homes in the evening. That’s when households typically use the most power.“It’s probably a good chance that natural gas has reached, in terms of a percentage, the highest generation that it might have,” King said. “The solar and batteries will start to chip into the gas.”In San Antonio, CPS Energy is accepting bids to add 900 megawatts of solar power to the utility’s generation mix. The addition will double CPS’ solar capacity.While CPS didn’t provide 2020 power generation figures, renewable power made up 15 percent of all electricity generated by CPS in 2019. That year, a third of the city’s electricity came from natural gas, while 21 percent came from coal-fired power plants.In prior years, before the utility shut down the J.T. Deely coal plant in late 2018, coal contributed more than one-third of the city’s electricity annually.The utility's remaining J.K. Spruce coal plant is the fourth-largest coal plant in Texas, according to the Energy Information Administration.On ExpressNews.com:Nuclear power generated 29 percent of San Antonio’s electricity in 2019, a significantly higher share than the statewide portion. Across Texas, nuclear contributed 11 percent of the state’s power, which was roughly the same percentage as five years earlier.While construction on new nuclear power plants has been over the past decade — largely due to their high cost — smaller, are a potential answer to develop affordable nuclear power.But that technology is far off, King said. It could take decades before the new class of reactors starts generating power.Still, he said in the future nuclear reactors could help replace the final fossil-fuel-based power sources when the economy is nearly decarbonized but wind and solar capacity is almost maxed out.“Any new nuclear is maybe 20 years out,” King said. “In some sense, if you want to go low-carbon, you’re hoping that the entire nuclear industry doesn’t just whittle away. Because in 20 years, when you’re kind of wind and solar’d out … then that’s when you’d want the nuclear.”Amid the pandemic-related economic shutdowns, Texans used a hair less electricity in 2020. The total amount of power generated in the state last year was .75 percent less than 2019.“It may be surprising that it’s a small change,” King said, “but the buildings are still there, and it’s not like they shut down the buildings and gave up.”diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net

Editor's Note: This story originally published in 2021.More electricity in Texas was generated from wind power than coal last year, another sign of the rapid emergence of renewable energy in the state.Since 2015, the amount of wind-generated electricity has more than doubled in Texas, and last year 23 percent of the state’s power came from wind turbines.About 18 percent of electricity generated in 2020 came from coal, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas reports.Five years ago, wind contributed less than 12 percent of the state’s power, while 28 percent of electricity generated in 2015...

Wind overtook coal as a power source in Texas last year

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