Texas among state leaders for solar, wind renewable energy development

A new report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory shows Texas is among the leading states in developing renewable energy sources.

The study found many projects are forming a queue of initiatives that can provide more electricity and storage than existing installed capacity. These are projects that are seeking to connect to power grids.

At the state level, most proposed solar projects are in Texas, Arizona, and California and most proposed wind projects are offshore of Texas and in the U.S. “wind belt.” Most new energy storage projects are proposed in Texas, California, and Arizona. Potential gas projects are highest in Texas and the Southeast.

Researchers pointed to strong developer interest in solar, storage, and wind with more than 1 terawatt, or 1,000 gigawatts (GW), of generator capacity and 427 GW of storage projects seeking interconnection at the end of 2021.

About 930 GW of this proposed generation is zero-carbon, and hybrids comprise a large and increasing share of planned projects.

For five regions where data was available, the time projects spent in queues before being built increased from about 2.1 years for projects built in 2000 to 2010 up to about 3.7 years for those built in 2011 to 2021.

There has been a substantial increase in annual interconnection requests both in terms of number and capacity since 2013 with over 600 GW added in 2021.

Eighty percent of solar (537 GW) is proposed to come online by the end of 2024, compared to 72 percent of storage (307 GW) and 56 percent of wind (138 GW). Thirteen percent of proposed solar projects have an executed interconnection agreement, compared to 16 percent of wind and 9 percent of storage.

Interest in hybrid plants has increased with 42 percent of solar (285 GW) proposed as hybrids and 8 percent of wind (17 GW). This level is up from 34 percent and 6 percent in 2020, respectively.

Source: Strategic Partnerships