Far West Texas News

What would J.R. Ewing say? The amoral oil baron of the 1970’s TV soap "Dallas" would gag on his bourbon to learn that the price of oil has sunk below $10 a barrel, down from $63 a barrel in January. 

Instead of oil derricks, Oberon, a solar farm the size of a small city, has just opened in West Texas. And 92 percent of the power that the municipality of Houston uses comes from wind and solar.

In a feature story on April 8, the Financial Times, the U.S. oil and gas capital is undergoing a solar boom. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says Texas will build a quarter of the record new industrial-scale solar capacity being installed across the U.S. this year.

Solar projects in Texas have become a rival to fossil fuels. Texas already ranks first in the U.S. in wind power capacity, the Financial Times says. Texas is now on its way to having the second-most solar photovoltaic capacity in the country, trailing only California. 

Meanwhile, the Republican-led state legislature, a longtime friend of oil and gas, has stood by and watched it all unfold – even though the legislators have the power to rein in the wind and solar industries. Solar and wind get an unfair break on local property taxes, critics charge. They also do not pay the cost of new transmission lines to deliver renewable electricity, which is instead shifted to ratepayers.

“Clean energy investors with time horizons of more than a decade like the stable returns of projects backed by long-term contracts,” the Financial Times says.  

Edward Hirs, energy fellow at the University of Houston, believes solar power has built in advantages over fossil fuels. 

“The key thing is they have a magnificent cost advantage over gas-fired power plants. The marginal cost of solar is zero,” Hirs said. Another advantage: the price of solar equipment keeps falling. 

Another big surprise for J.R. Ewing would be the number of foreign companies that have come to Texas. Foreign investors are among the big companies who are in on Texas’ solar boom.

The developer of the Oberon photovoltaic project is 174 Power Global — a division of South Korea’s Hanwha Group. The Oberon photovoltaic project will generate 150 megawatts of power when they plug into the grid south of Notrees in the Permian Basin. Oberon’s developers want to eventually expand the project to 1,380 MW — enough to serve 230,000 homes.

Last year, Enel Green Power North America, a division of a Italian utility, opened phase one of its 500 MW Roadrunner solar project outside Midland. Macquarie’s Green Investment Group, headquartered in Great Britain, has solar and wind projects in Texas. 

Chris Archer of Macquarie’s says companies are attracted to Texas’ light-touch regulatory approach, Financial Times reported. 

“It’s Texas: there’s very little in the way of planning laws or restrictions. It’s pretty streamlined from the point of view of permitting and getting connections. So you can develop an asset pretty quickly,” Archer said. 

Three Texas solar projects will supply much of the power for Google’s $600 million data center near Dallas, Neja Palmer told Financial Times. “[Texas] is a large, deregulated market. Users of electricity have a choice in who they buy electricity from and the type of energy that they buy. I think that’s been another driver of the large uptake of renewables in the state.”