Happy Thursday! The week has just been flying by!
Did anyone happen to read The Houston Chronicle’s Business Section on January 29, 2025, their article titled, “ERCOT says state needs more power lines”? In the article, it goes on to speak on Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) released its conclusions from their report. Previously ERCOT has said Texas may need 80% more power during peak times for its growing economy and population by 2030, and the conclusion in this report is we need 3,000 miles of additional transmission lines. The additional power lines would help with various industries including oil and gas and their electrification to reduce emissions and improve efficiency as well as help power data centers and crypto-mining and our expanding population. The cost of expanding our transmission lines and improvements on our electrical grid is estimated to be range of $30.8 billion to $33 billion. Transmission lines on average will take three to six years to construct unlike connecting energy supply or demand only take up to a year to connect to the grid. The Texas Legislature has on their agenda for this session to change how transmission lines improvements expenditures are apportioned, so residential customers won’t foot the bill. If the transmission lines aren’t expanded like the Houston freeways during rush-hour traffic, electron jams will occur, and inexpensive power won’t be able to get to parts of Texas like Houston or may even cause rotational outages. There is humor in this, the previous administration wanted to expand transmission lines to connect renewable energy to population centers, nonetheless in Texas oil and gas have been asking for more as they implement new technologies.
The loudest area of Texas is the
Permian Basin, the oil and gas companies there complained the grid wasn’t keeping
pace with their needs, and the Texas Legislature in 2023 told the Texas Public
Utility Commission (PUC) to instruct ERCOT to conduct a study on the Permian
Basin to find what their electricity needs are. The ERCOT report for the Permian Basin was published
in July 2024, and it was determined to address the Permian Basin’s current, and
future needs the cost may be between $13 billion and $15 billion and PUC
approved the improvement financing in September. Well, we hope the ERCOT report opened the
eyes of our legislature and the needs to connect our state to keep the lights
on for Texas residents and businesses! If
you would like to read more of The Houston Chronicle’s article, please
click the link: Texas grid needs transmission for crypto, data centers, oil and gas.
If you would like help in looking
into how to transport your product efficiently, safely, and with less of a
carbon footprint or just find out what is underneath your feet to help with
your emission reduction goals, contact us via email in the Blog and check out
our ESC website!
We hope you have a wonderful evening and a great rest of
your week!
**Disclaimer: You may be charged a fee to read The
Houston Chronicle’s article. **