Texas Utility Doubles Large-Scale Solar, Says It Will Be Coal-Free By 2016

[ScienceRocks]

Texas Utility Doubles Large-Scale Solar, Says It Will Be Coal-Free By 2016
Texas Utility Doubles Large-Scale Solar, Says It Will Be Coal-Free By 2016 | ThinkProgress

Thanks to new investments in natural gas and utility-scale solar energy, El Paso Electric, a Texas utility with nearly 400,000 customers, announced on Monday that its electricity mix will be free from coal by 2016.

Thanks to successive investments in large solar projects, EPE has doubled its utility-scale solar portfolio in less than one year. “Our west Texas and southern New Mexico region has the right kind of sun for optimal solar energy production, making this region the ‘goldilocks’ in terms of climate, humidity and heat characteristics that allow us to expand our renewable portfolio with cost-effective technologies and reliable energy resources,” said Tom Shockley, Chief Executive Officer at El Paso Electric, said in a statement.

The utility signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with the massive Macho Springs solar plant in New Mexico, a 50 megawatt (MW) facility with the capacity to power more than 18,000 homes. According to the agreement, signed last year, EPE would buy solar power from Macho Springs for 5.79 cents a kilowatt-hour — less than half the 12.8 cents per kilowatt-hour average price for electricity from new coal plants, according to Bloomberg.

 

[Mr. H.]

Of course, a significant portion of EPE’s electricity is derived from natural gas...

A thread about natural gas. Good job, M.

 

[whitehall]

You almost gotta laugh. Deep in the editorial is the trick statement that natural gas will be the primary source of energy rather than the dirty old coal. The gigantic solar eyesores are still a loser.

 

[mamooth]

While power prices rise across the nation, wind power in Texas lowers energy prices.

Spot Power Doubles in Mid-Atlantic as Heat Sweeps Region - Bloomberg
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Power prices fell in Texas as the amount of wind power on the grid topped forecasts.

Wind turbines produced an average of 7,447 megawatts for the hour ending at 2 p.m. local time, surpassing the day-ahead forecast by 77 percent, or 3,237 megawatts, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas Inc., which manages most of the state’s power. Wind provided 9.9 percent of the electricity used in the Ercot region in 2013.

Spot power across the Ercot grid fell 48 cents, or 1 percent, to average $46.09 a megawatt-hour during the hour ended at 2 p.m. local time from the same time yesterday.
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Wind power is also credited with preventing blackouts in Texas during the heat wave.

As Texas utility system is stressed, wind generation shows up on schedule - Blog - Into the Wind
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AWEA Manager of Transmission Policy Michael Goggin commented, "Like the Texas blackouts in February in which cold weather caused around 80 mostly fossil-fired power plants to shut down unexpectedly, this episode illustrates how common forced outages are at conventional plants, and drives home the point that no power plant is available 100% of the time. And, unlike wind energy, which ramps down gradually over a sustained period of time and is predictable, conventional power plants fail instantaneously. Wind energy is a valuable tool to diversify our portfolio of energy resources and make it more reliable. Wind plants are keeping the lights on and the air conditioners running for hundreds of thousands of homes in Texas."
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