As Texas wind and solar capacity increase, energy curtailments are also likely to rise, EIA finds
In Washington D.C., a report by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated that the agency projected that the combined wind and solar generating capacity in Texas’s power market will double by 2035, fueling a growing renewable share of total generation.
However, without upgrades to the state’s transmission system, wind and solar generation will increasingly be curtailed, according to EIA’s recent analysis, A Case Study of Transmission Limits on Renewables Growth in Texas.
“Grid operators must maintain a continuous balance between electricity supply and electricity demand to assure power system reliability. If more wind and solar power is available for production than the grid can use, grid operators have to curtail wind and solar generation to keep the grid balanced,” the report stated.
In 2022, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid manager for most of Texas, curtailed 5% of its total available wind generation and 9% of total available utility-scale solar generation. “By 2035, however, we project wind curtailments in ERCOT could increase to 13% of total available wind generation, and solar curtailments could reach 19%. In our analysis, we assume that no significant upgrades will be made to the ERCOT transmission grid so that we could isolate how the existing transmission system affects future renewable generation.”
