A TEXAS SOLAR BOOM?

Next Texas Energy Boom: Solar; Companies are spending $1 billion on new projects to harvest electricity from the sun

Russell Gold, August 21, 2015 (Wall Street Journal)

“A new energy boom is taking shape in the oil fields of west Texas…Solar power has gotten so cheap to produce—and so competitively priced in the electricity market—that it is taking hold even in a state that, unlike California, doesn’t offer incentives to utilities to buy or build sun-powered generation…Pecos County, about halfway between San Antonio and El Paso and on the southern edge of the prolific Permian Basin oil field, could soon host…several large solar-energy farms responsible for about $1 billion in investments…State incentives in California, Nevada and North Carolina helped fund the construction of many large-scale solar farms…But in Texas, while there is federal financial support for such projects, there are no state subsidies or mandates…Texas currently has only 193 megawatts of large-scale solar arrays…But the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the operator of the power grid that covers most of the state, expects between 10,000 megawatts and 12,500 megawatts of solar-generating capacity to be installed by 2029 [driven by falling prices]. That is roughly equal to the size of all solar farms currently operating in the U.S…” click here for more

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