Coverage of the Texas electric grid and energy sector -- ERCOT reliability, generation capacity, rising power demand, rates, and the policy decisions shaping how the state keeps the lights on.
AMERMIN, an Austin-based recycler and refiner of critical minerals, is renewing its call for federal export licensing on mill-ready tungsten scrap, warning in a July 29 news release that high-value material is leaving the country for overseas remanufacturing even as tungsten prices sit near record highs.
Texas is moving to string a new backbone of ultra-high-voltage power lines across the state — and on Wednesday the people whose land sits in the path came to the Capitol in numbers rarely seen for an interim hearing.
The state agencies that keep the lights on told a Senate panel Wednesday that Texas is planning for a grid nearly double the size of today’s — and that the surge is being driven by an unfamiliar customer: the data center.
The Public Utility Commission of Texas will consider three proposed behind-the-meter power arrangements for large electricity users, a new demand management framework for data centers and cryptocurrency mining operations, and several major electric utility rate cases during its Thursday meeting.
A sales tax break that cost Texas an estimated $14.6 million a decade ago is now on track to cost the state roughly $3.3 billion in a single two-year budget — and on Monday the Senate’s budget-writing committee spent the better part of a nine-hour hearing asking whether taxpayers are getting their money’s worth.
Two state administrative law judges have recommended that Texas regulators approve the Howard-Solstice 765-kilovolt transmission line along Route 4, a roughly 371-mile path estimated at about $2.18 billion, clearing one of the last procedural hurdles before the Public Utility Commission decides the case next month.
The Texas Senate's Business and Commerce Committee meets Wednesday to review the state of the electric grid, and the item that will get the most attention on its agenda is the rulebook meant to keep a wave of new data centers from raising costs and risking reliability.
Administrative law judges on July 24 denied two motions seeking to reopen the record in the disputed Howard-Solstice transmission line case, keeping the proceeding on schedule as they prepare a recommendation for the Public Utility Commission of Texas.
Governor Greg Abbott announced that Diode will not pursue a proposed data center near Cedar Creek Lake in Henderson County after the company determined the project did not meet the Governor’s directives or community expectations, according to a July 23 news release.
Two state lawmakers have formally asked the Public Utility Commission of Texas to hold off on a final decision on the Howard-Solstice high-voltage power line — and on every other 765-kilovolt segment of the state's transmission plan — until after the Legislature meets in 2027, arguing the state has not tested whether cheaper alternatives could avoid the lines entirely.