Texas authorizes 12 GW of solar projects in seven months

• The Texas grid driver has greater than tripled its speed of completing utility-scale solar affiliation researches given that 2019. Yet the battery backlog remains to expand.

The ERCOT grid operator that offers the majority of Texas has actually finished full affiliation researches for 58 solar projects completing 11.9 GW of capability thus far this year. The completed research studies will certainly permit project developers to continue towards business operation.

In the initial seven months of this year, ERCOT has already finished almost two times as several solar interconnection studies, for nearly two times as much solar capability, as it performed in all of 2019.

These data mirror an analysis of ERCOT's Generator Interconnection Status reports for December 2019 and July 2020.

Contributing to this significant increase in performance, said an ERCOT representative, is a resource assimilation group that ERCOT formed, with personnel from the operations, planning and grid coordination features, to aid improve the affiliation process. ERCOT likewise produced brand-new tools to help its staff and market individuals in processing interconnection requests, she claimed.

The agent credited transmission provider for doing "a lot of the work" on complete integration researches, while ERCOT staff "is responsible for assessing as well as authorizing FIS researches."

ERCOT has been lowering its matter of full interconnection research studies underway given that about February, as revealed by the diminishing light blue bars in this ERCOT graph:

ERCOT's solar workload remains high due to the fact that up until now this year, solar developers have actually asked for full studies for 49 projects amounting to 13.3 GW. At last count, ERCOT had concerning 2.7 GW of utility-scale solar capacity.

Battery projects languish

ERCOT's battery line up has actually expanded to regarding 9 GW. Programmers of 32 battery projects amounting to 4.9 GW have requested full researches this year, while ERCOT has completed only nine such studies this year for projects amounting to 0.7 GW. In 2019 ERCOT accepted only two battery projects for 0.25 GW, while it got 43 ask for full studies, representing 4.1 GW.

ERCOT's 2019 "State of the Grid" report claims that the grid operator has actually created a battery energy storage space task force, and also team have started discovering technical requirements, modeling needs as well as market guidelines for battery storage.

ERCOT's wind line is stable, with 15 wind projects amounting to 2.5 GW accepted given that January, and designers of 10 wind projects completing 2.4 GW requesting complete studies since then.

For a solar project developer, ERCOT's complete interconnection research is a significant hurdle, and needs settlement of the 2nd and bigger of two affiliation costs to ERCOT. A developer has to finish several other actions after ERCOT completes a complete research study, including collaborate with the transmission provider to attach the project to the grid.

Landmarks in ERCOT's interconnection procedure are shown below, with the full affiliation study displayed in the middle of the leading row:

ERCOT affiliation data were examined for this story by Driscoll Consulting LLC, a firm possessed by the writer. An ERCOT spokesperson stated that personnel examined the solar and also battery information, which were provided in a press inquiry, as well as found the data to be "near what we're showing in our system." The speaker claimed that ERCOT staff might make changes to FIS authorization days over time, "and because of this, contrasting an older GIS report with a new one may lead to some differences. As an example, technology changes might require extra researches which would subsequently impact the FIS authorization day."