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Op-Ed: To protect the Texas grid, help Texans protect themselves

guest column

This latest incident is more than a sign that Houstonians must take control of their power. Photo by Eric Turnquist

On the evening of May 16, a devastating “derecho” storm howled through Houston. Nearly 800,000 customers lost power. Many were still without electricity days later, as a heat wave baked neighborhoods that couldn’t power air conditioners.

It was yet another unwelcome reminder about the precariousness of the power grid.

These outages followed repeated grid warnings, conservation calls, and near-misses last summer and the summer before, as well as the catastrophic Winter Storm Uri freeze in February 2021.

The outages also preceded the increasingly extreme weather Texas faces and staggering growth on the ERCOT grid: after growing about 1 percent a year for 20 years, the power grid covering most of Texas may need to be 78 percent bigger by 2030.

So, this latest incident is more than a sign that Houstonians must take control of their power. It also shows that more and more, the state needs you to act.

Like any other market, a power grid runs on supply and demand. The supply of Texas energy is growing, which is great. At the same time, the economy is booming, leaving Texas setting demand records almost constantly. Generators can’t always keep up, especially when power plants break down or don’t produce electricity — there’s about an 18 percent chance that Texas will face at least one grid emergency this summer.

With odds like that, it’s no wonder that more and more Texans are finding ways to live more powerfully. Many are investing in solar panels and energy storage devices like Tesla Powerwalls.

These systems let families and business owners generate electricity during the day, store it, and use it later when there’s an emergency or just when power is scarce. They protect people from high bills and blackouts; it’s no coincidence that just since last month's storm, we've seen a five-fold increase in leads, reflecting a huge growth in interest in solar power. Further, since the storm, 90 percent of new Houston-area solar customers have bought backup battery systems, compared to 50 percent in 2024 and less than 25 percent in 2023.

That pattern has repeated across the country after severe weather events.

Homeowners and business owners can also slash their bills by weatherizing houses and buildings, the way power plants did after Uri. Advanced devices that help people automatically, and voluntarily, reduce electricity use when the grid is stretched would also help.

These improvements and investments would help more than just homeowners and business owners — they’d help the entire power grid. Every kilowatt that someone doesn’t need or can generate themselves frees up power for other families and businesses across the grid. That helps Texas keep the lights on, especially if electricity demand is about to spike as dramatically as the state expects.

Texas already incentivizes conservation and generation at a large scale. For example, large users like manufacturers and crypto miners get paid by ERCOT for reducing electricity use when the grid is stretched. And just last year, the legislature passed a $10 billion program to help fund new gas power plants.

It’s past time to extend similar incentives to everyday Texans, especially when we’re increasingly called upon to help ERCOT keep the lights on.

If crypto companies get money for reducing electricity use when ERCOT asks them to, then residential and business customers deserve to get paid too. The state could help Texans invest in technologies and smart metering programs that cut bills andautomatically reward people for reducing use on the hottest afternoons and coldest mornings.

More than that, the state has got to do more to reward solar customers who generate electricity and return it to the grid when demand rises. These virtual power plants will increasingly provide vital power when the state badly needs it, and consumers need to be rewarded for it. (Fortunately, the state is looking at strategies to take better advantage of virtual power plants.)

Finally, if Texas is helping big generators build gas plants, it should figure out ways to help regular Texans install solar panels and battery storage units. Such systems obviously help protect Texans from power outages, but they also fortify the ERCOT grid by reducing the demand on it.

Last month’s derecho was exactly the sort of freak occurrence that will become more common as the weather grows more extreme. The best way to protect the grid from such catastrophes is to protect individual Texas customers as well.

———

Bret Biggart is CEO of Freedom Solar Power, a Texas-based solar company.


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Researchers from the University of Houston, Jackson State University, and Howard University have created a new type of flexible high-energy-density capacitor, a device that stores energy. Photo via UH.edu

UH researchers contribute to promising energy storage technology

deluxe capacitor

Storage is a major part of the energy system that's ripe for innovation and disruption — and a research team based partly out of the University of Houston has made a remarkable milestone in capacitor technology.

Researchers from the University of Houston, Jackson State University, and Howard University have created a new type of flexible high-energy-density capacitor, a device that stores energy. For now, the prototype is just 1-inch by 1-inch, but a larger version of the technology can highly impact industries that rely on energy storage or batteries.

The research team explained their project in a paper titled “Ultrahigh Capacitive Energy Density in Stratified 2D Nanofiller-Based Polymer Dielectric Films” published in the journal ACS Nano.

“High-energy and high-power capacitors are essential for a reliable power supply, especially as we shift to using more renewable energy sources," Alamgir Karim, Dow Chair and Welch Foundation Professor of Chemical Engineering at UH and faculty mentor on the team, says in a UH news release. "However, current dielectric capacitors don't store as much energy as other types of energy storage devices such as batteries. The higher power density of capacitors makes them more attractive for a multitude of applications as compared to batteries."

The unique design of the capacitor includes layering polymers with oriented 2D nanofillers — which create a material that's thinner than human hair. The design featured an improved energy storage performance with higher energy density and efficiency than existing technologies.

"Our work demonstrates the development of high energy and high-power density capacitors by blocking electrical breakdown pathways in polymeric materials using the oriented 2D nanofillers," adds Maninderjeet Singh, who earned a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at UH last year and is the first author on the paper along with Priyanka Das from Jackson State University. "We achieved an ultra-high energy density of approximately 75 J/cm³, the highest reported for a polymeric dielectric capacitor to date."

Once scaled, the technology has the potential to enhance energy storage in electronics, electric vehicles, power systems, and more.

CTV has announced its newest fund to deploy capital to innovative clean energy tech. Photo via Getty Images

Chevron launches $500M clean energy fund to target low carbon fuels, advanced materials

fresh funding

Chevron Technology Ventures has announced its latest fund raised to deploy capital into clean energy technology.

CTV's Future Energy Fund III has reportedly launched with $500 million — an increase from its second fund from 2021 that was valued at $400 million. The inaugural Future Energy Fund was established in 2018. Each fund has targeted separate technologies — from capture, emerging mobility, and energy storage in fund I to industrial decarbonization, emerging mobility, energy decentralization, and circular economy in fund II.

"Future Energy Fund III, launched in 2024, will continue to look forward in the areas of focus for the earlier two funds and aims to expand investment in the areas of novel low carbon fuels, advanced materials, and transforming carbon to higher-value products," reads Chevron's website describing the Future Energy Funds.

The first two funds have invested in over 30 companies and has more than 250 other investors supporting low-carbon innovations.

CTV, based in Houston, has strategic partnerships with organizations within the Houston innovation ecosystem, including Greentown Labs, Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, the Ion, The Cannon, and the HX Venture Fund.

"CTV engages a range of startup companies, investors, incubators and accelerators to access technology that can be used across Chevron now and in the future to enable us to operate more efficiently, to lower the carbon intensity of our operations and launch viable new businesses," reads the CTV site.

Founded in 1999, CTV invests in emerging energy technologies as well as incubating startups in its Catalyst Program. Last month, CTV added Cerebre, a software-as-a-service company that works with its customers to unlock and leverage data to tap into AI tools and digitization, to the Catalyst Program.

Combining batteries with green energy is a fast-growing climate solution. Photo via Getty Images

Batteries and green energies like wind and solar combine for major climate solution across Texas, U.S.

team work

In the Arizona desert, a Danish company is building a massive solar farm that includes batteries that charge when the sun is shining and supply energy back to the electric grid when it's not.

Combining batteries with green energy is a fast-growing climate solution.

“Solar farms only produce when the sun shines, and the turbines only produce when the wind blows,” said Ørsted CEO Mads Nipper. “For us to maximize the availability of the green power, 24-7, we have to store some of it too.”

The United States is rapidly adding batteries, mostly lithium-ion type, to store energy at large scale. Increasingly, these are getting paired with solar and wind projects, like in Arizona. The agencies that run electric grids, utility companies and developers of renewable energies say combining technologies is essential for a green energy future.

Batteries allow renewables to replace fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal, while keeping a steady flow of power when sources like wind and solar are not producing. For example, when people are sleeping and thus using less electricity, the energy produced from wind blowing through the night can be stored in batteries — and used when demand is high during the day.

Juan Mendez, a resident of Tempe, Arizona, gets power from local utility Salt River Project, which is collaborating with Ørsted on the Eleven Mile Solar Center. As a state senator, Mendez pushed SRP to move to renewable energies.

He thinks the power company is still investing too much in gas and coal plants, including a major expansion planned for a natural gas plant in Coolidge, Arizona, near the solar center.

“This solar-plus-storage is a good step, but SRP needs to do more to provide clean energy and clean up our air and help address climate change," Mendez said.

The utility said it’s adding more renewables to its energy mix and recently pledged to zero out its emissions by 2050.

The U.S. has the second most electrical storage in the world, after China. In 2023, the U.S. added an estimated 7.5 gigawatts — 62% more than in 2022, according to the BloombergNEF and the Business Council for Sustainable Energy factbook. That amount can power 750,000 homes for a day and brings the total amount of installed capacity nationwide to nearly enough for 2 million homes for one day, according to BloombergNEF.

In the U.S., California leads in energy storage as it aggressively cuts greenhouse gas emissions. It has twice as much as any other state. Residential, commercial and utility-scale battery installations increased by 757% there over just four years, meaning there's now enough to power 6.6 million homes for up to four hours, according to the California Energy Commission.

That's partly because in 2013, the California Public Utilities Commission told utilities to buy energy storage with a target to be met by 2020. Since then, power companies have continued to add more batteries to help the state meet clean electricity requirements.

Southern California Edison is one utility adding thousands of hours of energy storage. It is putting in solar-plus-batteries to replace some power plants that burn natural gas and would typically supply electricity in the evening.

“If it’s just clean and not reliable, you really don’t have anything,” said William Walsh, vice president for energy procurement and management. “We need both.”

In California, batteries proved their value in September 2022, as the West was experiencing a long heat wave that sent temperatures into the triple digits. Electricity demand reached the highest the state had ever seen on Sept. 6, 2022, as people cranked up air conditioners.

Walsh credits the batteries added to the grid between 2020 and 2022 with helping to avoid blackouts. Two years earlier, there were rolling electricity outages in California during a similar extreme heat wave.

Texas has the second-most battery storage after California. Last month, Schneider Electric announced it's teaming up with energy company ENGIE North America on solar and battery systems in Texas to get closer to the French multinational’s 100% renewable energy goal in the U.S. and Canada. Before the Inflation Reduction Act, a major climate law passed in 2022, the deal and the necessary $80 million investment would not have been possible, said Hans Royal, Schneider Electric's senior director for renewable energy and carbon advisory.

Royal is advising other global Fortune 500 companies it works with to get into the market.

“The industry needs that, the grid needs it," said Royal.

Back in Arizona, Ørsted’s Eleven Mile Solar Center covers 2,000 acres in rural Pinal County. It has 857,000 solar panels and more than 2,000 cubes that look like large shipping containers but contain battery modules. Ørsted also has large solar and storage projects in Texas and Alabama, and in Europe.

When the Arizona facility opens this summer, most power from the solar farm will go to Facebook owner Meta's data center in Mesa. The solar power not needed by Meta, in addition to the power stored in the batteries, will go to the local utility's customers. The new batteries can ensure power to roughly 65,000 homes during peak hours of demand.

“What I think is exciting is just how rapidly this market is moving," said Yayoi Sekine, head of energy storage at BloombergNEF. “There's so much pressure for the U.S. and different regions to decarbonize, and storage is one of the major technologies to enable that. There's a lot of momentum."

Tierra Climate is technology agnostic, so while the company is seeing activity in the battery space, they can also work with other types of storage. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based energy storage fintech platform founder targets new market key to transition

ready to grow

If the energy transition is going to be successful, the energy storage space needs to be equipped to support both the increased volume of energy needed and new energies. And Emma Konet and her software company, Tierra Climate, are targeting one part of the equation: the market.

"To me, it's very clear that we need to build a lot of energy storage in order to transition the grid," Konet says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "The problems that I saw were really on the market side of things."

Konet says she was bullish on the energy storage side of things when she was an early hire at Key Capture Energy, a private equity-backed energy storage project developer. The issue with energy storage projects, as Konet describes, is they aren't being monetized properly and, in some cases, aren't sustainable and increasing emissions.

"The product we're building is solving these problems. It's a financial product, but what it's doing is solving a market deficiency," she says. "We're sending the right signal to the battery to operate in a way that reduces emissions, and then we're paying them for it because there's a demand to decarbonize."

For over a year, Konet, as co-founder and CTO, has worked on the platform, which is essentially a marketplace for corporates to buy carbon offsets, incentifying and monetizing storage projects.

Emma Konet, co-founder and CTO of Tierra Climate, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo via LinkedIn

Tierra Climate is technology agnostic, so while the company is seeing activity in the battery space, they can also work with other types of storage — like hydrogen, pumped water, and more. Konet says her ideal customers are companies with money and interest in playing a role in the energy transition and looking to offset their scope two and three emissions.

"The ultimate vision for our company is for this to be an accessible product that has a high degree of integrity that small to very large companies can execute on, because it's a pay-per-performance mechanism that doesn't lock companies into a really large contract," she says. "It's really scalable."

This year, she says the company, which won fourth place in the 2023 Rice Business Plan Competition, is focused on securing its first big contract and fundraising for its seed round.

———

This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

Houston-based Quidnet Energy has again secured funding from the DOE. Image via quidnetenergy.com

Houston energy storage company secures another $2M in federal funding

hydropower

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Energy announced another $13 million in funding to seven projects that are developing hydropower as a clean energy source. A Houston startup made the list of recipients.

“For more than a century, Americans have harnessed the power of water to electrify our communities, and it’s a critical renewable energy source that will help us reach our climate goals,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm says in a news release. “President Biden’s Investing in America agenda will help to expand the use of hydropower, increasing access to affordable, clean power and creating good-paying jobs.”

Houston-based Quidnet Energy Inc. received a little over $2 million for its project, entitled "Energy Storage Systems for Overpressure Environments," which is taking place in East Texas. The company, founded in 2013, is using water storage to power carbon-free electric grid approach to energy. As the DOE notes, the "low-cost form of long-duration electricity storage uses existing wellbores, which offers an opportunity to repurpose legacy oil and gas assets," per the release.

It's not the first Quidnet has secured funding from the DOE. Last fall, the company earned a $10 million grant from the organization's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, program. Quidnet is also venture backed, with its most recent raise, a $10 million series B round, closing in 2020 and including participation from Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Canada-based Evok Innovations.

The DOE's other PSH, or pumped storage hydropower, grants were announced as follows.

  • The Electric Power Research Institute, based in Palo Alto, California, secured $2.3 million to test "a turbine/generator system designed to add power-generating infrastructure to non-powered dams" in Iowa, per the release.
  • Atlanta-based Emrgy received $1.6 million to "develop a turbine to generate hydropower at non-powered dams where the water drop is less than 30 feet or in low-flow conduits, such as existing irrigation canals," in Washington.
  • Another Atlanta company, Georgia Power Co. is getting just under $2.9 million to develop and deploy PSH facilities across the country with its utility-scale solution to retrofit traditional hydropower facilities to serve as PSH facilities. The site the company will demonstrate it's tech is in Salem, Alabama.
  • RCAM Technologies, based in Boulder, Colorado, will work on offshore PSH technology in San Pedro, California, with its $4 million grant.
  • Drops for Watts received $243,540 to "develop a low-impact, modular system to generate hydropower from existing irrigation infrastructure" in Sagle, Idaho.
  • In Atlanta, Turbine Logic will use its nearly $200,000 in funding to utilize digital twin technology "to better predict common maintenance needs in hydropower turbines."
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Houston renewables developer powers up projects in southern region of the US

shine bright

Houston-based renewable energy developer EDP Renewables is making big moves in the Southern United States with its latest solar park projects.

EDPR celebrated the inauguration of Pearl River Solar Park in Scott County, Mississippi, that has an installed capacity of 210 megawatt peak, which produces enough power to meet the energy needs of more than 27,000 average Mississippi homes.

The project consists of 400,000 monofacial and bifacial tracking photovoltaic panels that will contribute clean, cost-competitive power to the state’s electric grid. Pearl River will provide more than $50 million in payments to local governments throughout its operating life, benefiting schools, health care facilities, fire departments, and other county services, as well as create hundreds of jobs, according to EDPR.

"We are thrilled to finally see Pearl River begin operations,” Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDPR North America, says in a news release. “Solar power is a win-win in Mississippi, as it accelerates the deployment of clean energy to the grid and contributes to the state’s decarbonization objectives. The project will immediately go to work to provide Mississippi with a readily available clean energy resource.”

A second project is currently under development for Ragsdale Solar Park in Canton, Mississippi. The project is expected to provide over $36 million to local governments and $15 million to landowners over the course of its lifespan once it becomes operational.

Ragsdale is expected to generate 100 MW of energy, which is equivalent to the consumption of 15,000 average Mississippi homes. According to the company, once operational, it will create over 100 construction jobs and will create three permanent jobs.

In May, EDPR opened its Crooked Lake Solar Park near Blytheville in Mississippi County, Arkansas, which is a 175-megawatt project. The company says it will generate enough energy to power the equivalent of 30,000 Arkansas homes each year.

In April, EDPR completed Misenheimer Solar Park in Stanly County, North Carolina. The solar project has an installed capacity of 74 megawatts, which is one of the largest in the state. Misenheimer Solar Park will generate enough energy annually to power the equivalent of more than 12,000 North Carolina homes while providing economic and environmental benefits, according to EDPR.

Heat-related Texas deaths climb after Beryl left millions without power for days or longer

ripple effects

As the temperature soared in the Houston-area home Janet Jarrett shared with her sister after losing electricity in Hurricane Beryl, she did everything she could to keep her 64-year-old sibling cool.

But on their fourth day without power, she awoke to hear Pamela Jarrett, who used a wheelchair and relied on a feeding tube, gasping for breath. Paramedics were called but she was pronounced dead at the hospital, with the medical examiner saying her death was caused by the heat.

“It’s so hard to know that she’s gone right now because this wasn’t supposed to happen to her,” Janet Jarrett said.

Almost two weeks after Beryl hit, heat-related deaths during the prolonged power outages have pushed the number of storm-related fatalities to at least 23 in Texas.

The combination of searing summer heat and residents unable to power up air conditioning in the days after the Category 1 storm made landfall on July 8 resulted in increasingly dangerous conditions for some in America’s fourth-largest city.

Beryl knocked out electricity to nearly 3 million homes and businesses at the height of the outages, which lasted days or much longer, and hospitals reported a spike in heat-related illnesses.

Power finally was restored to most by last week, after over a week of widespread outages. The slow pace in the Houston area put the region's electric provider, CenterPoint Energy, under mounting scrutiny over whether it was sufficiently prepared.

While it may be weeks or even years before the full human toll of the storm in Texas is known, understanding that number helps plan for the future, experts say.

What is known about the deaths so far?

Just after the storm hit, bringing high winds and flooding, the deaths included people killed by falling trees and people who drowned when their vehicles became submerged in floodwaters. In the days after the storm passed, deaths included people who fell while cutting limbs on damaged trees and heat-related deaths.

Half of the deaths attributed to the storm in Harris County, where Houston is located, were heat related, according to the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences.

Jarrett, who has cared for her sister since she was injured in an attack six years ago, said her “sassy” sister had done everything from owning a vintage shop in Harlem, New York, to working as an artist.

“She had a big personality,” Jarrett said, adding that her sister had been in good health before they lost electricity at their Spring home.

When will a complete death toll be known?

With power outages and cleanup efforts still ongoing, the death toll likely will continue to climb.

Officials are still working to determine if some deaths that have already occurred should be considered storm related. But even when those numbers come in, getting a clear picture of the storm's toll could take much more time.

Lara Anton, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of State Health Services, which uses death certificate data to identify storm-related deaths, estimated that it may not be until the end of July before they have even a preliminary count.

In the state's vital statistics system, there is a prompt to indicate if the death was storm related and medical certifiers are asked to send additional information on how the death was related to the storm, Anton said.

Experts say that while a count of storm-related fatalities compiled from death certificates is useful, an analysis of excess deaths that occurred during and after the storm can give a more complete picture of the toll. For that, researchers compare the number of people who died in that period to how many would have been expected to die under normal conditions.

The excess death analysis helps count deaths that might have been overlooked, said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

What do different toll numbers tell us?

Both the approach of counting the death certificates and calculating the excess deaths have their own benefits when it comes to storms, said Gregory Wellenius, director of the Boston University School of Public Health's Center for Climate and Health.

The excess death analysis gives a better estimate of the total number of people killed, so it's useful for public health and emergency management planning in addition to assessing the impact of climate change, he said.

But it “doesn't tell you who," he said, and understanding the individual circumstances of storm deaths is important in helping to show what puts individual people at risk.

“If I just tell you 200 people died, it doesn't tell you that story of what went wrong for these people, which teaches us something about what hopefully can we do better to prepare or help people prepare in the future,” Wellenius said. ___

Things to know: Meet the Houston founder decarbonizing shipping, events not to miss, and more

taking notes

Editor's note: Dive headfirst into the new week with three quick things to catch up on in Houston's energy transition.

Podcast: Houston logistics company works toward software solutions to energy transition challenges

Matthew Costello, CEO and co-founder of Voyager Portal, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast. Photo courtesy of Voyager

For several years now, Matthew Costello has been navigating the maritime shipping industry looking for problems to solve for customers with his company, Voyager Portal.

Initially, that meant designing a software platform to enhance communications and organization of the many massive and intricate global shipments happening every day. Founded in 2018 by Costello and COO Bret Smart, Voyager Portal became a integral tool for the industry that helps users manage the full lifecycle of their voyages — from planning to delivery.

"The software landscape has changed tremendously in the maritime space. Back in 2018, we were one of a small handful of technology startups in this space," Costello, who serves as CEO of Voyager, says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Now that's changed. ... There's really a huge wave of innovation happening in maritime right now." Read more.

Big deal: Houston clean hydrogen producer teams up with O&G for series of pilots

Gold H2 has aligned itself with an oil and gas company, making its Black 2 Gold microbial technology available for the first time. Photo via cemvita.com

Gold H2, a Houston-based producer of clean hydrogen, is teaming up with a major U.S.-based oil and gas company as the first step in launching a 12-month series of pilot projects.

The tentative agreement with the unnamed oil and gas company kicks off the availability of the startup’s Black 2 Gold microbial technology. The technology underpins the startup’s biotech process for converting crude oil into proprietary Gold Hydrogen. Read more.

Events not to miss

Put these Houston-area energy-related events on your calendar.

  • CCS/Decarbonization Project Development, Finance and Investment, taking place July 23 to 25, is the deepest dive into the economic and regulatory factors driving the success of the CCS/CCUS project development landscape. Register now.
  • The 5th Texas Energy Forum 2024, organized by U.S. Energy Stream, will take place on August 21 and 22 at the Petroleum Club of Houston. Register now.
  • Hart Energy's New Energies Summit is taking place on August 27 to 28 at the Hilton Americas - Houston. Register now.

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