Texas is usually known as the home of Big Oil in the US, and its former governor Rick Perry is now head of the energy department that he once vowed to dismantle if ever he was president.
Despite this, Texas gets more than 20 per cent of its electricity from wind power, and it expects all its new capacity to come from wind, solar and storage, with some 1,800MW of batteries already in the pipeline.
How have they managed this? By thinking ahead and planning. Warren Lasher, the head of system planning for the local grid operator ERCOT joins Energy Insiders to explain the Texas approach to grid planning and management, including the huge spinning reserve -2300MW – it must manage for no other purpose than to act as back-up to its four nuclear plants.
You can find this and prior episodes of Energy Insiders here, along with episodes from Solar Insiders and our EV-focused podcast, The Driven.
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