As the coronavirus pandemic devastates the state’s already flailing oil and gas industry, solar energy production is on a trajectory for record growth.
Nancy Nusser reports for The Texas Observer, Aug 13, 2020, 8:00 am CST
On Garland Richards’ ranch in West Central Texas, silicon solar panels spread for two square miles in a shimmering blue expanse that resembles a lake. The Holstein solar farm, which began operating in July in Nolan County, is as long and broad as a small town. The farm has 709,000 solar panels that generate 200 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 40,000 homes.
Richards leased a tract of his land for the solar farm in hopes that the revenue will pay the taxes on the rest of his property—10,000 acres of cattle country that’s been in his family since the 19th century. “I want to be able to hand the land down to the next generation,” Richards says. “If I can make enough on 1,300 acres to pay the taxes on 10,000 acres, it’s worth it.”
For decades, the 68-year-old former cowboy and his family relied on oil wells that Exxon drilled on the property, which sprawls between San Angelo and Abilene. “But now the oil is depleting, and the market is depleting as well,” he says. In April, oil prices dropped into negative territory for the first time in history as the coronavirus pandemic battered the already beleaguered oil and gas industry. “When oil is negative $47 a barrel, solar looks pretty good,” Richards says.
With intense sun and vast tracts of empty land that can accommodate the huge scale of major solar farms, West Texas has long been primed for rapid solar development. Texas’ free market approach to electricity production and loose regulation of development encourages big electricity projects of any kind, including solar. With technological innovations, the cost of developing solar farms has dropped about 40 percent in Texas in the last five years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). And once a solar farm is built, it’s inexpensive to operate compared to gas and coal-fired plants, because its fuel is free.
Federal tax credits have further cut the cost of developing solar farms. Meanwhile, demand for solar electricity has increased as both the public and corporations have embraced it as a means of battling the climate crisis. In response, solar farms have begun to proliferate in West Texas. There are now 17 solar facilities in Texas, including 13 that can produce at least 100 megawatts of power, according to SEIA. “Solar has just started to come on big in the last two to three years,” says Rich Clark, an engineer and board member of Solar Austin, a renewable energy nonprofit in Central Texas. “It’s a huge wave that’s coming.”
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The solar surge follows the whirlwind growth of the wind industry in West Texas, where the landscape is dominated by towering propeller-like turbines that stretch for miles. For example, Nolan County, with fewer than 15,000 residents, is home to three of the largest wind farms in the world, and it’s recognized globally as a wind energy powerhouse.
According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the nonprofit that oversees Texas’s electrical grid, the state’s utility-scale solar capacity (the big solar farms that connect to the grid) is expected to increase 150 percent this year to 5,777 megawatts. Next year, installed solar capacity is expected to grow more than 130 percent to 13,449 megawatts, according to ERCOT, which relies on information provided by developers.“They’re looking to purchase solar because it makes economic sense to them. That’s when I feel like you’ve hit that turning point in Texas.”
Momentum has slowed slightly since COVID-19 began spreading across Texas in March, quarantining workers and disrupting supply chains. But unlike the oil and gas industry, the solar industry has not been devastated. “There have been impacts,” says Charlie Hemmeline, executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association. “But big picture, 2020 was slated to be solar’s best year in Texas, and we’re still on track for that to be the case.”
In the last 10 years, Texas had lagged behind other states in terms of solar development, according to SEIA rankings since 2010. But in 2018 and 2019, Texas ranked second in the nation for the amount of solar capacity installed during the year. “It’s really been a sea change for Texas,” says George Hershman, president of California-based Swinerton Renewable Energy, which has eight solar farms in Texas. He says the state “is becoming our biggest solar market.”
Some of Texas’s largest companies, including heavy polluters in the petroleum sector, have begun switching to solar and investing in its development. In 2018, ExxonMobil agreed to use solar and wind power to draw oil from the Permian Basin. Bloomberg reported that it was the biggest renewable deal ever signed by an oil company. In 2019, Facebook agreed to finance construction of the 4,600-acre Prospero solar farm in Andrews County in West Texas. This year, Bank of America announced that it had partnered with the Texas-based Reliant Energy to get electricity from a West Texas solar farm. And Dow Chemical signed an agreement to use a South Texas solar farm to supply its Gulf Coast petrochemical plant, the largest facility of its kind in the western hemisphere.
“When you have these major companies that are not focused on environmental issues deciding to purchase solar, that’s really important,” says Clark, of Solar Austin. “They’re looking to purchase solar because it makes economic sense to them. That’s when I feel like you’ve hit that turning point in Texas.”
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