For renewable energy project developers entering the Texas wind market, there are several questions that need to be answered to start scoping out a project. Here are a few that come to mind:
- Where are these Texas wind turbines everyone is talking about that keep the ERCOT power grid going?
- Who owns these wind farms in Texas?
- How much power is generated by these assets in the state of Texas today?
Now a part of Enverus, Energy Acuity data answer all these questions and more in Enverus Power & Renewables’ latest tool for renewable energy developers, investors and market analysts — Project Tracking Analytics.
The Texas wind power boom and growing interest in solar capacity add-ons
To start diving into wind power plants’ portion of total renewable energy projects in Texas, we will begin by showing project capacity by the mix of the different energy sources that have come online.
Figure 1 | Power plants in Texas and the changing mix of generation fuels powering the ERCOT grid.
Coal and natural gas have historically made up the majority of generation fuels for power plants in Texas. However, there has recently been a huge push towards wind. Wind (turquoise bars) has become a much larger part of the mix of new power plant capacity coming online. And what is interesting is how much solar (yellow bars) is projected to possibly come online in the future. Based on existing project plans, solar is projected to take a larger part of the future energy mix.
Taking a closer look at the actual volume or the actual capacity projected to come online, it’s apparent that too much supply is planned currently. We don’t need that much capacity. So, what this means is that there are a lot of projects out there that are at risk of never making it past the planning or subsequent stages.This is a snippet from the Enverus Innovator Blog. Please click here to view the rest of the insight
