Grid planners and experts on why markets keep choosing renewables

Thinking of resources as either intermittent or backup oversimplifies the complexity of the grid, experts said. 

“Wind and solar don’t have to produce 100% of the time because people aren’t consuming all available electricity 100% of the time,” said Beth Garza, a senior fellow at the R Street Institute think tank and former ERCOT market monitor CEO.

“It is easy to vilify solar and wind,” Garza said. But regardless of the resource mix, “the average electricity load is only about half the peak demand…”

Recently, renewable trade groups have warned of a slowdown in the solar industry. But alternative resources, like natural gas, face their own challenges, from lengthy planning and approval processes to rising fuel prices and years-long equipment backlogs.

“The newest, most efficient natural gas peaker plants are expensive to build and are likely to become more expensive to run because of competition for natural gas,” Garza said. “The market’s answer to load growth is still to build more wind, solar, and batteries because they are the cheaper and faster to build.”