Texas Senate passes bill requiring solar plants to provide power at night

The Texas Senate passed a bill Thursday that leading business interests fear would lead to an age of expensive power and rolling blackouts.

If passed by the House, state S.B. 715 would require all renewable projects — even existing ones — to buy backup power, largely from coal or gas plants.

This would require solar plants in particular to buy backup power to “match their output at night — a time when no one expects them to produce energy and when demand is typically at its lowest anyway," consultant and energy expert Doug Lewin wrote in an April analysis.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, a right-wing think tank that is one of the bill’s most prominent advocates, argues that it is necessary to make up for the “volatility” of wind and solar power.

The state business lobby disagrees. A study by the Texas Association of Business (TAB) found that the legislation would cost the state $5.2 billion more per year — and cost individual consumers $225 more. 

In addition to more expensive power, the TAB study found, Texans would also get a higher risk of blackouts in the heat of summer or in future ice storms.

In a state where electric demand is growing rapidly — Texas electric load is projected to nearly double by decade’s end — virtually all new power of the last five years has come from renewables, which take about half the time of gas plants to be added to the grid.

The bill follows two prior bills passed by the Texas Senate that target the state’s nation-leading renewables industry. S.B. 388 requires every new megawatt of renewables to be matched by a megawatt of new gas power — effectively throttling the growth of the state electric production in an environment where new gas turbines are in short supply.

And S.B. 819, championed by suburban Republican Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, would use “the police power of the state” to restrict landowners from leasing their property to wind and solar companies.

The fate of all three now lies in the Texas House, where pro-renewable voices among the GOP were winnowed amid the Republican primary purges of 2024, when Gov. Greg Abbott (R) targeted rural opponents of school vouchers, and Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) targeted members who had voted to impeach him.

As a whole, the legislation cuts against rising support for renewables among Texas Republicans. Recent polling suggests that nearly 80 percent of Texas GOP voters believe that renewables make the Texas electric grid more stable.