Energy Capital Podcast

A solar or wind farm in ERCOT can watch wholesale prices fall below zero, which makes a project hard to finance. Ever.green sells companies 5- to 10-year contracts for a project’s renewable energy certificates (RECs, credits for megawatt-hours of clean power), giving developers revenue they can take to the bank.A pending greenhouse gas protocol change would phase in hourly matching, counting clean power only in the hour and on the grid where a company uses it. Backers say that cuts double counting. Ever.green Chief Executive Cris Eugster says it would steer buyers away from long-term contracts on dirtier grids. We recorded an interview with him in October.On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Eugster, Ever.green’s co-founder and a former chief operating officer of CPS Energy, about how long-term contracts get clean projects built.The rest of the conversation:* Solar for schools: REC contracts at $25 to $35 each, against $2 to $3 on the spot market, lower the power bill for 15 Wayne County, W.V., schools enough to free up money for teachers.* How the deals work: Ever.green signs as the developer’s one counterparty and splits a project’s RECs among several companies, so no developer negotiates with five sets of corporate lawyers. “Contracted revenue is like gold,” Eugster says.* Keeping an old wind farm running: how REC revenue supports the repowered Ocotillo wind farm in Big Spring, Texas, while the owners sells power at merchant prices.* Proving the money mattered: Eugster says no one can prove a project wouldn’t have been built anyway, so Ever.green asks developers to attest its contract is material.* Gamers as buyers: how the platform SuperPower pooled player subscriptions behind the 110 MW Three W solar farm in Hill County, and Eugster’s hint that other industries will follow next year.* Who carries price risk: why Eugster says a fixed REC price lets corporate buyers back new projects without taking on the price swings of power purchase agreement.* Plus: the data center race and its emissions, CPS Energy’s 771 MW Save for Tomorrow Energy Plan efficiency program, ERCOT’s batch zero study, Eugster’s path from MIT and McKinsey to Houston City Hall, and nuclear.Chapters* 00:00 – Introduction and guest background* 01:44 – From MIT and McKinsey to Houston City Hall* 05:13 – CPS Energy’s STEP efficiency program* 07:22 – From NAES to founding Ever.green* 09:21 – Why clean energy needs to move faster* 11:06 – Why Texas builds energy faster* 12:31 – Turning RECs into project financing* 15:28 – Solar for schools and how the deals work* 20:32 – Gamers back a Texas solar farm* 24:29 – Keeping an old wind farm running* 26:26 – The 10 percent test for additionality* 29:16 – Hourly matching vs. backing dirtier grids* 32:44 – Data centers and the race for power* 37:16 – Nuclear and a growing marketResourcesPeople & Organizations* Joshua Rhodes (LinkedIn)* Webber Energy Group (Website - LinkedIn)* Energy Capital (Podcast - LinkedIn - YouTube)* Texas Energy & Power (Website)* Cris Eugster (LinkedIn)* Ever.green (Website - LinkedIn)* Michael Leggett (LinkedIn)* SuperPower (Website)Company & Industry News* Three W Solar project comes online in Texas* Video gamers give 110-MW Texas solar project a financing boost* REC sales on WV school district’s solar project free up money for two teacher salaries* Clearway Partially Repowers 55 MW Wind Farm in West TexasBooks, Articles & Filings Discussed* Ever.green - Additionality Methodology for High-Impact RECs* Ever.green - Hidden Risks of Hourly Matching* GHG Protocol - Public Consultations on Scope 2 and Electricity Sector Consequential Accounting* ERCOT - PUCT Approves ERCOT’s Batch Zero Process for Connecting Large Electricity Users* CPS Energy - STEP (Sustainable Tomorrow Energy Plan)Related Podcasts by Energy Capital* Why some large loads insist on paying their way* What batch zero settles and what it leaves open* Wind is keeping West Texas ranches solvent* Beyond the Tax Credit Cliff with Freedom Solar CEO Bret BiggartTranscriptJoshua Rhodes: Hey everyone, and welcome to another episode of the Energy Capital Podcast. I’m really excited to have Cris Eugster here, co-founder and CEO of Ever.green, to kinda talk about, you know, what they do in terms of renewable energy credits and setting up some really interesting deals when it comes to getting projects financed. Cris has a double E, is a double E all the way through from his undergrad at Texas A&M University, master’s and PhD at MIT, so be careful what you’re gonna ask him, or that same to myself. Then he spent roughly nine years at McKinsey & Company before most folks in Texas will know him as ending up as the COO of CPS Energy down in San Antonio. After that, he was the president and CEO of NAES Corp before becoming founder and CEO of Ever.green. And Ever.green is a market maker in high impact RECs, renewable energy credits, that enable capital flow to new clean energy projects. Cris Eugster, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.Cris Eugster: Hey, Josh. Great to be here. Thank you.Joshua Rhodes: Yeah, absolutely. So Cris, so we go way back actually. Like, I remember you from when I was a grad student at UT Austin, and you were at CPS kind of at that time. I actually wanted to start off saying, hey, thanks for taking the time to talk to grad students. ‘Cause like I know your job was busy when you were in San Antonio, but I really appreciate you putting in the time for that. And God, you never know, ‘cause now I’m the one on, interviewing you on a podcast, right? So you just never know how it’s gonna go.Cris Eugster: Yeah. You guys have put an amazing program in place up there at UT with the Webber Group and, you know, all the analytics that y’all have done in the ERCOT market, which is pretty dynamic. You know, it’s always been impressive and what little I can do, I really enjoyed it.Joshua Rhodes: Well, I appreciate it. It’s always helpful to have, like, kinda real world folks and conversations and things like that. So let’s start maybe a little bit, kind of before CPS, and then we’ll talk a little bit about your time at CPS, give a kinda little Texas, like, kinda bounding for this, and then we’ll move on. So your path into energy is pretty interesting. You studied... You’re a double E. You’re electrical engineering at A&M and MIT, just like I said, studying quantum transport in nanostructures, which we won’t talk about on this podcast, but sounds fun.Cris Eugster: Josh, I was curious kinda where Moore’s Law takes you. How small can you get? You know, it’s always a divide by two. It’s like, how small can you get? And so that was kind of part of the MIT work. When you get to some of those quantum dimensions you know, how do devices act, and how do you engineer that world? It’s, it was pretty exciting, but that’s behind me now.Joshua Rhodes: I mean, we’re getting there with, like, you know, silicon being printed on, like, extremely thin wafers for all kinds of technology and now compute and other types of stuff. So, I mean, it’s relevant, that’s for sure. But after that, you spent nine years at McKinsey. How did you find your way into the utility business? Like, what attracted you to challenges in the electricity sector?Cris Eugster: Yeah. You know, I’ve always been sort of big picture type of person. You know, I like strategy. I like kinda solving things that can make a difference in this world. I’m very mission-driven in kind of how I think about my career. And McKinsey was a really exciting place. I mean, you know, they were kind of tapping out of kind of MBA students, and they wanted to go after PhDs and retool them to be, you know, business consultants. You know, I went from a PhD program, which was a set course to become a professor someplace or work at one of the big kind of labs. But it was a pretty big pivot for me in my career to go into kind of business and management consulting, and McKinsey afforded that opportunity. They were kinda starting to attract PhDs and try to kinda retrain, retool them to make a differ… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

In August, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered ERCOT to audit the data centers seeking to connect to the grid, pausing ERCOT’s batch zero study of the first cohort for a new process to connect large loads as a group. In September he told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt data center permits.Rep. Drew Darby, the San Angelo Republican who chairs the House Energy Resources Committee, wants harder terms for those projects: data centers pay their own way, show they have tenants and financing, and earn support from the towns that host them. His 2025 bill, House Bill 3970, offered a faster path to the grid for large loads that bring their own generation or agree to cut use on ERCOT’s call. He faults the delay and says “the worst thing we could do is throw batch zero out.”On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Darby about large loads and the infrastructure rural Texas carries for the rest of the state.The rest of the conversation:* Dove Creek and speculative load: Darby says Beacon Data Centers left Dove Creek residents without answers on water, power and noise. One project shopped to five towns, he says, becomes 5 gigawatts of demand on paper.* The data center tax break: The 2013 sales tax exemption for data center equipment was pegged at $14.6 million for 2014-2015. The Senate Finance Committee projects $3.3 billion for 2028-2029. Darby would rework it rather than repeal it.* The 765-kilovolt review clock: Darby backs the new transmission lines but wants to add at least three more months to the Texas Public Utility Comission’s 180-day review. On one line, he says, 1,400-plus landowners were added to the review process late with no extra time.* Produced water: Oil wells bring up two to five barrels of brine per barrel of oil. Darby puts injection at 50 to 75 cents a barrel and treatment for reuse at about three times that. He counts three permits pending at TCEQ to discharge treated water into the Pecos River basin.* Rural representation: By Darby’s count, 17 House members represent the two-thirds of Texas west of Interstate 35. Harris County alone has 25.* After November: Darby credits the 76–74 House of 2009 with getting its work done because members worked together.* Plus: grid-enhancing technologies and HB 5200, which passed the House 128–0 and never got a Senate hearing, and how Tom Green County got its panhandle.Chapters* 00:00 - Welcome and Tom Green County’s panhandle* 03:10 - Why data centers lost public support* 05:12 - Making data centers pay their way* 08:04 - What cities miss about rural Texas* 12:24 - Keeping data center hookups moving* 15:40 - Dove Creek and projects on paper* 20:04 - What data centers owe host towns* 22:11 - More time for landowners on power lines* 29:34 - Getting more from existing power lines* 32:00 - Oilfield wastewater as new water* 38:27 - How much oilfield water Texas could use* 40:23 - The election and working across the aisleResourcesPeople & Organizations* Joshua Rhodes* Webber Energy Group (Website - LinkedIn)* IdeaSmiths (Website - LinkedIn)* Energy Capital (Podcast - LinkedIn - YouTube)* Drew DarbyCompany & Industry News* KBTX - Abbott pauses data center permits pending water and power review* KERA - Texas lawmakers question billions in tax breaks for data centers* San Angelo LIVE! - Darby reacts to Dove Creek data center TCEQ permit application* Texas Tribune - Pressure mounts to allow treated oilfield waste in Texas rivers and on rangelandBooks, Articles & Filings Discussed* Office of the Governor - Governor Abbott directs comprehensive data center audit* ERCOT - New batch connection process for large electricity users* Texas Legislature - HB 3970 (89R), expedited large-load interconnection* Texas Legislature - SB 6 (89R), bill analysis* Texas Legislature - HB 5200 (89R), grid-enhancing technologies* Texas Legislature - HB 49 (89R), produced water liability* Legislative Budget Board - HB 1223 (83R) data center sales tax exemption fiscal note* Rep. Drew Darby - Letter to TCEQ on Beacon Data Centers* Utility Dive - Texas regulators approve Permian Basin Reliability PlanRelated Podcasts by Energy Capital* Solutions Over Theatrics with Texas House Energy Resources Chairman Drew Darby* Who Pays for the New Grid with Pablo Vegas* What the Sierra Club wants from the Texas grid* How Texas decides which data centers to connect* Why some large loads insist on paying their wayT This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

House Bill 5200 would have had ERCOT evaluate grid-enhancing technologies (sensors, software and advanced conductors that raise an existing transmission line’s capacity). It passed the House 128-0 in 2025. The Senate never gave it a hearing.Its author, State Rep. Rafael Anchía (D-Dallas), says no senator would carry it, and he plans to refile it for the session that opens Jan. 12. Lawmakers return to a large-load queue topping 400 gigawatts, mostly data centers, and a data center freeze Gov. Greg Abbott ordered in August pending an audit.On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Anchía, who has represented House District 103 since 2005, about how a bill becomes Texas law and what the 2027 session holds for the grid.* How a Texas bill dies. About 1,200 of the 8,700 bills filed in 2025 reached the governor. Anchía calls the process “a mechanism designed to kill legislation” and tells advocates to build coalitions between sessions.* SB 6’s price of entry. The PUCT’s September rules under SB 6, the 2025 large-load interconnection law, requiring a $100,000 study fee and $50,000 per megawatt in security.* Predictable rules. Anchía, once skeptical of Texas’s competitive market, says it works when the rules stay predictable, and names what undercuts it: shifting tariffs, threats to re-regulate, and favoring one fuel over another.* Upgrades and new lines. He supports the 765-kilovolt lines the PUCT began approving in August. Utilities such as Oncor recover new-line costs more easily than upgrade costs, he says, so he wants grid-enhancing technologies made a condition of new builds.* Winter risk after Uri. Experts tell Anchía a severe winter storm worries them more than summer peaks. He wants proof the Railroad Commission’s 2022 gas weatherization rules hold through one.* The 2027 list. Anchía expects bills requiring data centers to disclose energy and water use and ending their taxpayer subsidies. He also wants a temporary fund, modeled on the old System Benefit Fund, for the Texans least able to absorb price shocks.* Plus: his two decades in the House, from deregulation through CREZ, his predictions for the Nov. 3 Texas House and statewide races, and what a change in control of Congress would mean for Texas energy.Abbott’s audit is still open, and its findings will reach a Legislature that Anchía expects to make targeted fixes to SB 6.Chapters* 00:00 – Meet Rep. Rafael Anchía* 00:58 – How a bill becomes law in Texas* 06:25 – When public input matters most* 08:33 – Why HB 5200 stalled in the Senate* 12:43 – 20 years of Texas energy policy* 16:46 – What still needs fixing after Winter Storm Uri* 19:18 – The data center rush and SB 6* 22:27 – Why the governor paused data centers* 26:05 – Steady rules vs. picking winners* 30:29 – Bigger power lines and getting more from the grid* 35:01 – Rewarding utilities for doing more with less* 37:51 – Priorities for the 2027 session* 40:14 – Election predictions for Texas* 44:02 – If Congress flips: what it means for Texas energy This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Ellis, now research director at MarketClear Utility Policy Research and an expert witness for consumer groups in rate cases. They discuss why the gap persists and how an auction could close it.Chapters00:00 – Introducing Mark Ellis00:57 – How utilities make money07:08 – From Sempra insider to utility critic12:53 – What makes a return fair17:56 – The math behind a 6 percent return22:39 – Lower returns and credit ratings28:08 – Walking through a $10 billion project33:15 – What utility stock prices reveal36:49 – Why regulators keep returns high42:12 – Letting investors bid: the MarketClear auction45:11 – Who would invest, and how much50:09 – How the utility business would change54:12 – Why utilities resist non-wires alternatives This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

In ERCOT’s new interconnection process for large loads, a data center can connect sooner as a provisional controllable load resource. That is, ERCOT can curtail power above an agreed firm level. A study from Base Power and Piq Energy shows batteries near the transmission lines to a data center could stand in for most of that curtailment.In the study, 80 megawatts of batteries would clear every transmission constraint created by a 100 MW data center near Burleson, Texas, on Oncor’s system. A battery beside a strained line relieves it about one-for-one, while curtailing a more distant data center may relieve half as much. Any battery near the line has that edge.On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Chase Dowling, head of market operations for Austin battery company Base Power. The business model is Base Power retains ownership of the batteries it installs for retail customers, and homeowners subscribe to the service.Dowling puts the batteries’ reach at “80 percent, 85 percent of all of the constraints.” The rare failures that sever part of the system, he says, still need new transmission or generation.* The limits: the battery fleet needed grows faster than the load, and West Texas lacks enough homes for large fleets. No market yet pays batteries to act as transmission.* Who pays: Dowling proposes that a data center facing curtailment fund a battery fleet near its constraints, and the host homes get outage protection.* Utility fleets: for El Paso Electric and CoServ, Base builds co-branded fleets and hands control to the utility. It now installs in Chicago, in PJM.* Backup: Dowling says a portable generator can stretch a Base battery through a multi-day outage like Winter Storm Uri.Dowling says the challenge now is getting ERCOT to model these fleets at the transmission substation, where planners can see them.Chapters00:00 – Chase Dowling and the new Base Power study01:01 – What Base Power has built since 202302:22 – Manufacturing home batteries as a grid resource05:10 – The homeowner value proposition07:50 – Base Core's generator port and extended backup11:43 – Deployment speed and what limits it14:43 – Regulated utilities and who controls the batteries16:28 – Lessons from Texas for PJM18:23 – Flexibility Without Curtailment: the paper's premise22:32 – Why location matters: 100 MW at Burleson Switch26:52 – How 80 MW of batteries hosts 100 MW of load28:47 – Bigger loads, the long tail, and the 80/20 rule35:13 – Batch Zero, curtailment risk, and who pays38:17 – Data center PR and how big this can getResourcesPeople & Organizations* Joshua Rhodes (LinkedIn)* Energy Capital (Podcast - LinkedIn - YouTube)* Chase Dowling (LinkedIn)* Base Power Company (Website - LinkedIn - Base Core)Company & Industry News* Base Power raises another US$1 billion in Series D financing for US residential BESS* Base Power brings cheap batteries to residents in power-starved PJM* Base Power to launch 100-MW home battery network for Texas utilityBooks, Articles & Filings Discussed* Piq Energy and Base Power - Flexibility Without Curtailment* ERCOT - Aggregate Distributed Energy Resource (ADER) pilot project* ERCOT - Trending topic: new batch connection process for large electricity users* Texas Legislature - SB 6, 89th Legislature, enrolled bill text* El Paso Electric - El Paso Electric and Base Power install first home battery in El Paso as part of new reliability pilot program* Farhad Billimoria and Conleigh Byers - The value of compute load: what cloud markets reveal about the potential for flexible data centersRelated Podcasts by Energy Capital* Creating a Distributed Battery Network with Zach Dell* How Load Flexibility Could Unlock Energy Abundance with Tyler Norris* What batch zero settles and what it leaves open* How Texas plans to serve infinite demand* How Data Centers Can Strengthen the Texas Grid with Camus Energy CEO Astrid AtkinsonRelated Posts by Texas Energy & Power* $6.5 billion in transmission projects, batch zero closure, and the questions that follow: Texas Grid Roundup #93* Flexibility and Speed to Power, Reading & Podcast Picks, December 7, 2025TranscriptJoshua Rhodes: Hey everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Energy Capital Podcast. I’m really excited to have Chase Dowling here from Base Power Company to talk about what the company’s been doing, as well as a new study they’ve put out looking at the impact of distributed energy resources on the ability to unlock firm load for places like large loads, data centers.But yeah, really excited to have Chase here to talk about it. Chase has a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from UW, University of Washington. In and around there, he also worked 10 years at the Pacific Northwest National Lab, ending as a senior applied scientist before switching over to machine learning at Tesla.Very recently, actually, as of recording this podcast, he’s a founding power systems engineer at Base Power Company. Chase, welcome to the Energy Capital Podcast.Chase Dowling: Thanks, Josh. Sorry for the mouthful. Yeah. Ten years at DOE and then a couple years at Tesla working mainly in energy.Joshua Rhodes: Yeah. Yeah. Well, energy’s kind of the thread that brings us all together these days, right? It’s like energy is AI, is transportation—Chase Dowling: Is everything.Joshua Rhodes: —is now politics too, which we won’t get into. So it’s been a while since Doug originally interviewed Zach about Base Power, and so, you know, a lot has happened since the last time we checked in. You know, you started as a pretty novel combination of retail electricity and batteries in Texas, but now you’re manufacturing your own hardware, working directly with utilities.Kind of before we get into kind of the specific study, what’s going on at Base right now? Like, what are y’all working on?Chase Dowling: Yeah, no, it feels like a while, but it’s crazy to say founded at the end of 2023 that we’re scaling up. We’ve got 600 MWh of batteries in the ground, and we’re just now speeding up.We’re installing all over Texas, and we’re now entering our first new markets outside of Texas, installing in Chicago and trying to get at the capacity problems in PJM. But the biggest changes maybe since you talked to Doug or since Doug talked to Zach was we’re installing in deregulated territory as a retailer, but now we have a lot of regulated utility partnerships as well, where we come in and help facilitate the construction of a large distributed peaking resource for these regulated utilities.But that’s the story since then, is that we’ve been scaling, growing, and installing resources faster.Joshua Rhodes: I mean, you’re manufacturing these units in Austin. I know you’re looking— you’re also building a new facility out by the airport, but, you know, you’re currently in the old, you know, Austin American-Statesman building.I actually took a tour of the place, I wanna say, like 7 months ago, and you had, like, you know, half of a line going. But I was there last week. I mean, you had multiple lines going, robots following magnetic tape all around, and lots of folks putting stuff together. Tell me about the manufacturing process and kind of what you’re doing, you know, here in Austin.Chase Dowling: Yeah. So this is a big piece of being a vertically integrated designer, manufacturer, developer, and operator of an energy resource and how we build our kind of like technological advantage that we’re providing to the grid. And so manufacturing is like a key piece to the advantage here. If you look at distributed resources, and this is what we do as a company, we go and we install batteries on homes, residential batteries on homes, and we can talk more about like how this model works or what the value proposition to the homeowner is.But we’re manufacturing these home batteries to be a grid resource first. If you go out on the market today and you look at, like, what are your options, you could buy a battery from Enphase, you could buy a Powerwall. These are very modular, very f… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

The PUCT approved the southernmost of three 765 kV paths into the Permian on September 13. It has not approved the center path: administrative law judges recommended denying it in August, and chairman Thomas Gleeson sent it back asking what the lines are needed for and what they would save customers.Michael Webber’s answer is that Texas has run this experiment. CREZ, the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone program finished around 2014, was primarily 345 kV and lowered costs, cut emissions and improved reliability. His case for 765 kV is right of way: more capacity per corridor means fewer corridors, and corridors are what landowners object to.The same answer runs through most of what is moving on the grid. On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Webber, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin.* The case for AI: Anthropic, OpenAI and xAI leaders called for a global slowdown in September. Webber says nobody has explained what the technology is for. “The case has not been made strongly.”* Who is resisting, and why: degrowth politics on right and left, a youth movement against data centers, and law firms pushing associates toward AI while the partners who would have trained them work remote. Webber reads the water-and-noise objections as displaced anxiety about AI.* Where the gas goes: a bigger grid lets Texas sell gas at $8 to $15 rather than burn it at $3, and lets Houston draw West Texas solar instead of adding gas plants to its airshed.* Hormuz: about 20 percent of world oil moves through the strait, plus fertilizer and chip inputs. US diesel averaged $6.06 a gallon on September 11. Texas will be fine, Webber says; Bangladesh and Pakistan will not.* Affordability in November: electricity bills creep up through distribution costs, transformers and wildfire hardening, while fuel prices move by the day. Webber expects an anti-incumbent mood.* Scarcity and abundance: US electricity demand was flat for 20 years and is growing again. Webber wants data centers treated as a way through scarcity, not its cause.* Plus: why the headline numbers frightened everyone inside six months, what the next six months hold, and why the grid needs helicopter pilots.Chapters* 00:00 – Introduction* 01:03 – Where Texas is building fast, and where it is not* 02:19 – Why the data center mood flipped* 05:18 – The AI slowdown letter* 08:45 – Why younger workers are pushing back on AI* 12:32 – Junior lawyers, junior engineers, and mastering the fundamentals* 16:42 – Whether energy for AI is a social good* 19:26 – The case the hyperscalers have not made* 21:51 – The argument for 765 kV* 26:34 – West Texas solar and Houston's peak* 28:54 – Hormuz, molecules, and what Texas exports* 33:00 – Affordability heading into November* 39:05 – Scarcity, abundance, and a drama-free summer* 42:02 – What the next six months holdResourcesPeople & Organizations* Joshua Rhodes (LinkedIn)* Webber Energy Group (Website - LinkedIn)* IdeaSmiths (Website - LinkedIn)* Energy Capital (LinkedIn - YouTube)* Michael Webber (Website - LinkedIn - X)* LBJ School of Public Affairs (Faculty page)* Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering (Faculty page)* Kay Bailey Hutchison Energy Center (Website)Company & Industry News* Regulators approve controversial southern 765-kV transmission line* Texas grid expansion splinters conservatives as data center backlash grows* Facing an estimated 474 GW of interconnection requests, Texas hits pause on data centers* The AI industry faces a bipartisan grassroots fightBooks, Articles & Filings Discussed* Economic impacts of 765kV transmission development in support of Texas and Houston-area reliability* ERCOT - Trending topic: 345-kV and Texas 765-kV strategic transmission expansion* ERCOT - Reliability plan for the Permian Basin region* PUCT - Approval of the first extra high voltage transmission lines in the ERCOT region* Judges recommend regulators reject proposed 765-kV line* Top regulator recommends remanding transmission project to administrative law judges* Costs and emissions reductions from the Competitive Renewable Energy Zones wind transmission project in Texas* Anthropic, OpenAI CEOs call for slowdown in AI development* Using AI, mathematicians find hidden glitches in fluid equations* EIA - Strait of Hormuz is chokepoint for 20% of world’s oilRelated Podcasts by Energy Capital* Build Fast or Fall Behind with Michael Webber* Texas competes on everything except transmission* Inside the PUC’s Cost-Allocation Overhaul with PUC Chairman Gleeson* What the Sierra Club wants from the Texas grid* Texas Got Tested, Grid Stayed UprightRelated Posts by Texas Energy & Power* Data centers say they pay their way; Texas will hold them to it* More Generation, More Transmission, More Load, More Challenges: Texas Grid Roundup #90* A Tale of Three Performance Reviews: Texas Grid Roundup #94TranscriptJoshua Rhodes: Hey everyone, and welcome back to another edition of the Energy Capital Podcast. I’m really excited to have Michael Webber back. I think we’re probably gonna get on some kinda six-month rotation with him just to kinda talk about all things energy in Texas, ‘cause there is never a shortage of things to talk about related to those.But for those who may have not seen the first episode that we’ve had about six months ago, we’ll put that in the show notes. But Michael’s a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, where he’s a Sid Richardson Chair at the LBJ School of Public Affairs, as well as the Cockrell Family’s Chair in Mechanical Engineering in the Engineering Department.He’s also the former CTO at Energy Impact Partners, a former Chief Science and Technology Officer at ENGIE in Paris, and the founding partner of IdeaSmiths. Since then, has been— is now running an energy opinion column regular every couple weeks for the Houston Chronicle. His work sits at the intersection of energy, engineering, policy, and commercialization. Michael Webber, welcome back to the Energy Capital Podcast.Michael Webber: Thank you. It’s always fun to have a chance for a conversation with you.Joshua Rhodes: For sure. So about six months ago, you know, one of the big themes in the podcast when we were talking was that Texas needed to build faster or kinda fall behind, or one of your big things was Texas needed to build fast or fall behind.So looking back since then, do you think we’re building fast enough? Or are we falling behind? Challenges changed? What’s really changed in the last six months?Michael Webber: We are building quickly on some things. We’re building new power plants, especially solar and some power capacity like batteries and a little bit of wind and gas.So we’re doing a good job building new sources of power. Doing a pretty good job building load, new factories, gigafactories, advanced factories or data centers. So that’s a good news story in terms of our ability to keep up with things. We are not as fast today at building transmission, although we have been fast in relatively recent history, so I’m optimistic we can do that again.And we’ve had issues building gas pipelines and sometimes water facilities we’ve been slow at. So there are places where we have a lot of success on the power side, some success on the gas infrastructure side, but also some shortages on transmission and other things. So it’s like we got a mixed record, but still pretty good.We’re better at it still than anywhere else in the United States and almost as good as anywhere in the world.Joshua Rhodes: Absolutely. Are there two or three developments in the past six months that have maybe has challenged your view the way Texas is headed? You have any idea what they’d be?Michael Webber: Yeah. The two big political things that have emerged that I see is sort of a anti-development or degrowth movement on the right and the left politically around data centers and transmission.So we’re seeing non-traditional political bedfellows in opposition to getting some things done, so that feels relatively new, especially the flipped opinion on data centers. That’s gone from very exciting t… This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

Rayburn Electric Cooperative broke ground in June on a 570 MW gas plant in Sherman, backed by a $411 million Texas Energy Fund loan at 3 percent, the fund’s seventh generation loan and first to a cooperative.Rayburn is also putting batteries in members’ houses. Both run on the same logic: Rayburn generates the power and owns the transmission, so it earns on both. An independent power producer earns on energy alone.On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Matt Boms talks with Christian Nagel, senior director of power supply and production at Rayburn.* Home batteries as a transmission asset. Texas allocates transmission costs on four summer peaks, so discharging batteries then cuts Rayburn’s bill, worth more, Nagel says, than the energy.* Telling real load from speculative. Rayburn screened data centers with its own questionnaire before ERCOT standardized one. Abbott’s audit has since pushed ERCOT’s Batch Zero study past April 2027.* Plus: the 12CP fight and what comes after gas.Whether Rayburn is a model or a special case turns on rules the PUCT has not written.Chapters00:00 – Introduction01:36 – Wind development and the landowner conversation06:02 – The video that went viral08:17 – Using your service to open doors10:23 – The Atlantic Council years12:19 – Her graduate research on energy and national security14:44 – From Annapolis to flying Growlers19:54 – Grounded, and the move to cryptologic warfare23:59 – Why veterans run down their own service30:08 – Advice for veterans trying to get into energy32:56 – How to plug into Project Vanguard34:49 – Closing thoughts This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

Last month the Public Utility Commission of Texas held public hearings on plans to build giant 765 kilovolt transmission lines. The controversial plan drew complaints from influential voices, including Senate Business and Commerce Chairman Charles Schwertner, who asked commissioners to deny the pending applications for the lines in a letter. Cyrus Reed sat through the roughly 15 hours of testimony, and we recorded with him the morning Schwertner’s thoughts came out.On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Reed, legislative and conservation director of the Sierra Club’s Lone Star Chapter, about what it means to run an environmental group in a state with no renewable mandate, and about nearly everything happening on the Texas grid this summer.Chapters:00:00 – Introduction and guest background00:46 – What it means to be an environmental group in Texas02:50 – How property rights and an energy-only market built out renewables06:54 – The Lone Star Chapter's platform for the 90th Legislature08:48 – County authority, HB 40, and codes instead of bans10:46 – How load growth, 765 kV, and data centers got tangled together15:43 – ERCOT versus SPP, and who carries the risk17:11 – Schwertner's letter and what the PUCT could actually do20:47 – How a CCN works, and the 180-day clock23:07 – A bigger grid and more oil and gas extraction25:37 – What a fairer routing process would look like29:18 – Batch Zero, the large load queue, and the disclosure problem33:19 – Mitigation fees and community benefit agreements36:02 – Behind-the-meter gas and the minor source permit threshold38:33 – The Green Tea Coalition, unlikely allies, and the 2027 platform This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

Wind, solar, and storage are the only new categories of generation to reach the US power system at scale in fifty years. Craig Gordon thinks his company is adding one. Mainspring Energy’s linear generator drives magnets through copper coils rather than burning fuel in a flame, switches between natural gas, biogas, propane, and hydrogen under load, and ramps from minimum to full output in 25 seconds.The same modular unit is going into a municipal utility’s fleet in Utah, an islanded truck depot in Los Angeles, dairy digesters in California, and data centers. It is still a gas-fired resource. The flameless reaction suppresses NOx rather than carbon, and the carbon case rests on burning less fuel per megawatt hour than the engines and turbines it displaces.In ERCOT it arrives at a useful moment. Large load requests run into the hundreds of gigawatts, most of them data centers, against a small fraction approved to energize. The Batch Zero process approved in June will sort which projects get firm grid capacity, and generation on a customer’s own site never enters it. Gordon does not treat that as a substitute for building the grid, and says the answer is both.On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Matt Boms talks with Craig Gordon, head of business development for Mainspring, who heads global policy and regulatory affairs at Mainspring after 12 years at Invenergy. The conversation covers:* How a linear generator works, magnets driven through copper coils 13 times a second, with no flame, water, or oil.* Where the units are going, a 48 MW project for a Utah municipal utility and a Los Angeles depot charging 96 electric trucks with no grid connection.* What it burns, natural gas today, with dairy and landfill biogas running in California at small scale and hydrogen far off at current production costs.* Running alongside solar and batteries, covering the hours renewables do not, and how it compares with engines, turbines, and fuel cells.How much of ERCOT’s queued load ends up served on site rather than through the grid will shape what Texas has to build.Chapters: 00:00 – Introduction and Guest Background00:40 – From Ameren to Invenergy to Mainspring03:43 – What Mainspring Builds and Why It Matters06:19 – How a Linear Generator Works08:39 – Why Customers Are Generating Power Locally11:02 – Data Centers, DERs, and Grid Investment12:16 – Ramping and Efficiency vs Engines, Turbines, and Fuel Cells14:27 – UMPA's 48 MW Project and the Prologis Microgrid17:28 – Maintenance, O&M Hubs, and Field Lessons18:39 – Fuel Flexibility, Biogas, and Hydrogen20:36 – Scaling to Hundreds of Megawatts, and Islanded vs Grid-Parallel25:37 – ERCOT's Cluster Study and the Interconnection Queue29:21 – Policy Barriers, Air Permits, and Behind-the-Meter Value33:57 – Linear Generators in 10 Years This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe

About 6 million electric vehicles are on American roads, and roughly 1 million of them can already export power back to the grid. A typical one sits parked about 95 percent of the day, plugged in for 12 to 14 hours while needing 2 to 3 hours of charge. Texas still meets most of that capacity as load.That works out to roughly 10 gigawatts of export capacity. In ERCOT the value of tapping it splits three ways, because transmission and distribution utilities own the wires, competitive retailers sell the electricity, and generators sell the power. A TXU Energy customer in Oncor territory can collect free overnight charging from the retailer and a separate rebate from the utility, with nothing combining the two.On this episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, Matt Boms talks with Joseph Vellone, chief executive of ChargeScape, the vehicle-grid venture owned by BMW, Ford, Honda, and Nissan, about what it takes to move a parked car from load to capacity. The core argument: the hardware is arriving on its own, and what holds the resource back is incentive design and interconnection policy.For years EVs have been cast as a threat to grid stability. Vellone calls that a misconception and points to record adoption without failure: “we haven’t brought the power grid down.” During the episode, Boms and Vellone work through:* Split incentives in ERCOT, why a deregulated market gives the wires company, the retailer, and the generator each a reason to pay an EV driver and none of them a reason to coordinate.* Grid-parallel interconnection, the argument that a vehicle backing up a home without exporting to the grid should not need an interconnection agreement.* V1G, V2H, and V2G, the three tiers of vehicle-grid integration, what each requires in hardware, and which are running commercially today.* The lease-return wave, Cox Automotive’s forecast of 300,000 EVs coming off lease in 2026 to second owners more price-sensitive than the first.How the Public Utility Commission draws the line between grid-parallel operation and export will shape how much of that parked capacity ERCOT can call on.Chapters00:00 – Introduction: Joseph Vellone and ChargeScape02:34 – Why competing automakers built a shared platform05:49 – When an EV becomes a grid resource07:35 – V1G, V2H, and V2G in plain English10:48 – Six million EVs and 10 gigawatts of export capacity12:07 – The consumer progression to bidirectional charging15:57 – Texas incentives and what moves customer behavior18:07 – The changing profile of the American EV driver21:04 – Policy barriers: unstacked value and interconnection queues24:58 – Splitting EV value across ERCOT wires, retail, and generation28:00 – Grid-parallel interconnection at the PUCT30:05 – Scaling from pilots to full market participation32:50 – Secondhand EVs, multifamily, and fleets37:15 – Why record EV adoption has not strained the gridResourcesPeople & Organizations* Matt Boms (LinkedIn)* Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance (Website - LinkedIn)* Joseph Vellone, CEO of ChargeScape, previously North America head at ev.energy and a consultant at Boston Consulting Group (LinkedIn)* ChargeScape (Website)* Energy Capital (Podcast - LinkedIn - Apple Podcasts - Spotify)Company & Industry News* BMW, Ford and Honda Agree to Create ChargeScape, the 2023 agreement forming the joint venture, built on the Open Vehicle-Grid Integration Platform* ChargeScape Welcomes Nissan to Its Alliance of Automakers, making Nissan an equal 25 percent investor alongside BMW, Ford, and Honda* PUCT Project No. 54233, Technical Requirements and Interconnection Processes for Distributed Energy Resources, the rulemaking covering new 16 TAC 25.210, amendments to 25.211, and the repeal and replacement of 25.212* Vehicle-Grid Integration Council comments in Project No. 54233, addressing grid-parallel bidirectional charging and the V2G DC and V2G AC configurations This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com/subscribe