Dive Brief:
- San Antonio’s municipal electric utility, CPS Energy, on Tuesday issued a request for proposals to acquire 600 MW of solar generation through a power purchase agreement.
- The utility said in a release that the procurement aligns with its Vision 2027 generation plan, “which aims to deliver affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy to the greater San Antonio area.”
- CPS Energy has over 1 GW of solar capacity operating in the area. The utility said it plans to announce a battery storage RFP by the end of this year to add to the 470 MW of storage it has already contracted.
Dive Insight:
Mark Stover, executive director of the Texas Solar+Storage Association, noted that solar “has been the fastest growing power source in Texas for several years, with roughly 6,000 MW added to the grid over the past year alone.”
“This growth, especially when paired with the strong growth in battery storage, has increased grid reliability and helped to drive affordability,” Stover said.
While Texas remains a nationwide leader in renewable energy deployment, recent policy shifts by the Trump administration have made those assets – particularly solar and wind – more difficult to deploy.
Solar and storage projects in Texas account for nearly 40% of 116 GW of projects that the Solar Energy Industries Association said are “at risk of being targeted by the administration” because they have not received all necessary federal, state and local permits.
CPS Energy is within the territory overseen by the Energy Reliability Council of Texas, which has a nearly 100-GW interconnection queue of solar projects without a signed agreement, said Joshua Rhodes, an energy research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and a City of Austin Electric Utility Commissioner.
Given that fact, plus “the coming rollback in federal tax support of renewables, it is probably an excellent time to be shopping for Black Friday deals on renewables in the ERCOT market right now,” Rhodes said.
CPS Energy said the deadline for interested bidders to submit a proposal for the solar RFP is Jan. 8.
