Houston’s post-Beryl outages highlight benefits of distributed energy

Those customers include lots of H-E-B grocery stores, which became ad hoc emergency cooling and supply centers in the storm’s wake. H-E-B has complained about poor reliability from CenterPoint’s grid since 2015, and joined a host of groups protesting CenterPoint’s $200 million generator plan.

Enchanted Rock’s customers don’t just use their generators during outages, however. They also save money by using them to generate electricity on site to reduce their need for utility power throughout the several hundred hours of the year when the Texas grid is straining to meet power demand during heat waves or cold snaps — and when prices for grid power can skyrocket.

Distributed gas generators like Enchanted Rock’s can keep providing power even when large-scale grid disruptions like those that left millions without power during Winter Storm Uri make it impossible for large-scale gas-fired power plants to do so. They can also be built in much smaller increments than conventional gas power plants, Schurr noted. That could make them a far more effective target for the billions of dollars that state lawmakers approved last year to bankroll large-scale gas-fired power plants in the name of protecting Texans from grid outages, he said. 

What about solar and batteries?

Solar power isn’t just clean — it’s also increasingly the most cost-effective electricity source available. When the grid goes down, solar power can provide a portion of a site’s power needs while the sun is shining, and also charge batteries for use after the sun goes down.

Today, most of the larger commercial customers that Enchanted Rock serves require too much power to make solar and batteries a cost-effective backup option, Schurr said. Households, on the other hand, can ​“prioritize loads and say, ​‘I need my refrigerator working, I’ll charge my phone, I’ll run a fan, but I’ll forgo the air conditioning, the TV, the pool pump,’” he said.

That’s how Jeff and Jennifer Wright rode through post–Hurricane Beryl outages. They installed rooftop solar from leading U.S. residential solar installer Sunrun and two Tesla Powerwall batteries at their Houston home soon after moving there in 2021 from Puerto Rico, where they had lived through six weeks without power after Hurricane Maria struck the island.

“We knew Houston gets hurricanes and bad storms, and we knew we never wanted to be out of power again like that,” Wright said. The combined solar and battery installation cost about $60,000, he estimated. But being able to keep their food refrigerated, their lights on, and their phones and computers charged has offered the ​“kind of peace of mind we cannot put a price on.”

Most utilities in Texas don’t offer the net-metering policies that have driven rooftop solar adoption in other states. But the Wrights recently switched to a plan from a retail electricity provider that offers free electricity at night in exchange for higher rates during daytime hours, when Texas faces heat-driven stresses on its power grid.

By using their batteries to store and make use of more solar power during daylight hours, the couple has reduced their monthly electric bill from $165 to about $31, Wright said. These savings won’t pay off the cost of their system anytime soon — but they help add some economic value to the peace-of-mind decision to install it, he said.

“I’ve become an evangelizer about solar. I know it’s not accessible to everyone at the level we have it. But if you’ve got the means, go ahead and do it,” he said. ​“You may not get the largest system in the history of the universe, but it will keep you going when times could be really bad.” 

Getting more distributed energy to those that need it 

Paying distributed energy resources for the value they provide when the grid is up is a vital part of covering the cost of installing them so they’re available when the grid goes down. It’s also important for helping people who don’t have tens of thousands of dollars to spend to access those resiliency benefits.

So far, however, Texas lawmakers and utility regulators are moving far more slowly to put DERs — both fossil gas and clean options — on an equal playing field with utility grid-hardening investments and central power plants as part of the state’s overall grid-reliability strategy, Lewin said.

Take the state’s focus on big power plants for its primary fossil-gas grid reliability plan. SB 2627, a state law passed last year, calls for creating a $7.2 billion state-run low-interest loan program to support the construction of new power plants. The law also included a carve-out of $1.8 billion for microgrids using gas generators, solar, and batteries.

But as of today, the PUCT has yet to set up the process to apply for that $1.8 billion in funding, let alone determine how grants and loans to support those projects will work, Lewin said.

Matthew Boms, executive director of the Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance trade group, sits on the committee advising the PUCT on this microgrid effort. ​“It’s going to take probably at least a year, year and a half for Texas to get this up and running,” he said. ​“We’re at the stage now where the technology is a little ahead of the policy.” He’s hoping that state lawmakers and regulators will speed that work, ​“given the frequency and intensity of these storms.”

Some promising options are beginning to emerge. CenterPoint and Enchanted Rock are working on a plan with the PUCT to stand up a ​“community microgrid” in Houston to power an entire neighborhood, Schurr noted.

That concept is similar to the microgrid that utility Commonwealth Edison has built in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood, he said. That microgrid is anchored by an Enchanted Rock gas generator, but also integrates rooftop and community solar systems, batteries, EV chargers, and other large electricity loads that can be turned down and shifted to cushion against shortfalls in power.

Enchanted Rock’s microgrid customers in Texas haven’t yet integrated solar power or batteries, Schurr said, but ​“there are at least some openings for making that happen” in the future.

Elsewhere, smaller-scale solar-and-battery microgrids are already being built to help recover from hurricanes. Puerto Rico is the target of federal funds and private-sector investments to bring solar-battery systems to homes and communities. In Louisiana, a coalition of faith and community groups is building them at churches, clinics, and community centers that serve as disaster recovery centers. This Louisiana effort won $250 million in federal grants last year. The funding approved by Texas lawmakers is much larger, Boms noted: “$1.8 billion is a good chunk of change. We could do a lot with that to improve resiliency.”

Texas is also piloting what could become a groundbreaking virtual power plant program that aggregates the solar and battery capacity of individual homeowners. The Texas Aggregate Distributed Energy Resource Pilot Project launched in early 2023 and in August approved its first big participant, Tesla, which enrolled customers in Houston and Dallas who now get paid to allow their Powerwall batteries to inject energy when the grid needs it.

So far, however, only about 15 to 20 megawatts of VPP capacity has been enrolled under this program, Lewin said — far less than what other solar-rich states like California have been able to accomplish with VPPs. ​“I think it is time for the PUC to get really serious about moving that out of pilot, taking the training wheels off,” he said.

Texas has gotten this VPP program off the ground quite quickly, said Amy Heart, senior vice president of public policy at Sunrun, which operates solar-battery VPPs across the country. But as a member of the PUCT’s ADER Task Force, Heart has also identified some barriers to expanding the scope of VPPs under the program.

“There have been few [providers] that have been able to figure it out from a financial and technical standpoint,” she said. One challenge is a rule requiring participating batteries to provide ERCOT with digital status updates every five seconds, which requires costly dedicated communications technology to be installed in every home, she said. Another is a requirement that batteries commit to providing capacity for up to four hours at a time, which reduces the value they could provide during shorter-duration grid emergencies.

“One of the opportunities Texas has is the ability to leverage all of these resources to benefit the grid as a whole,” she said. ​“By reducing barriers and making it more financially affordable to invest in these on-site generation and storage assets, you’re going to be able to create not only a more resilient grid but a more affordable grid.”