“Though big businesses and local governments–especially those that want to build more solar and wind farms–will spend millions on lobbyists to overcome opposition to their handouts, those in charge of Texas’ purse strings may decide that this is the time to draw them a little tighter.”
Wind has dominated Texas’ renewable energy landscape for the last 20 years. However, solar is making a concerted effort to catch up. Utility-scale solar capacity almost doubled in 2020, topping 8,000 gigawatt hours.
Texas, which already leads the nation in wind capacity, is moving up the ranks of U.S. states in terms in solar capacity. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, Texas ranked third in 2019, with enough generation installed on solar farms to power 642,199 homes (abstracting from solar’s intermittency).
Favorable press releases are one thing.…
Given the obvious harm caused by the renewable energy industry’s pricing practices on grid reliability, not to mention other competitors, can regulators find predatory pricing in violation of antitrust law?
Politically correct renewables have become the energy de jour of many politicians, regulators, environmental groups, and members of the public. As such, there is little political will to take on the renewable energy industry. Antitrust regulators have long demonstrated great selectiveness in what companies they target for enforcement of potential violations.
Perhaps the most important reason can be garnered from the Federal Trade Commission’s explanation of predatory pricing:
…Can prices ever be “too low?” The short answer is yes, but not very often. Generally, low prices benefit consumers. Consumers are harmed only if below-cost pricing allows a dominant competitor to knock its rivals out of the market and then raise prices to above-market levels for a substantial time.
“Artificially low electricity prices offered by renewable generators in Texas have led to bankruptcy for non-renewable generators, including Panda Temple Power, Energy Future Holdings, and Exelon Generation Texas Power.”
While sellers offer special promotions, negative prices in electricity markets make no sense except in the context of renewable energy subsidies. ERCOT explains the anomaly:
…Market prices tend to go negative when there is low consumer demand and the thermal generators that have chosen to remain online cannot be backed down further to allow the available, lower-cost wind generation to serve consumer demand. In situations like this, some wind generators will be curtailed to balance generation with load. In these cases, since wind is the marginal generation, it sets the market price, which may be low or negative. In 2017, system-wide negative pricing occurred during 64 hours; in 2018, as of August, during 30 hours.