CW39 — Texas PUC adopts new ‘Middle Mile Broadband’ rule to help bring internet access to unserved areas
April 3 — This week, the Public Utility Commission (PUC) voted unanimously to pass the Middle Mile Broadband rule, aiming to increase internet access in unserved and underserved areas of Texas.
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KXAN: Electric vehicle enthusiasts predict impact on Central Texas
April 7 — Just this week, GM and Honda announced their companies’ partnership on creating more affordable EVs, with a launch goal of 2027. Choate also stressed the efforts of other vehicle companies, such as Kia, to develop sustainable options.
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Spectrum News: Sarah Stogner discusses campaign for railroad commissioner
April 7 — Elections for Railroad Commission garner little attention, but this year was different. Stogner was one of many primary challengers hoping to oust incumbent Wayne Christian. Christian is hoping to win a second term, but has faced allegations of corruption and misuse of office.
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Power Engineering: Improving weather resilience in wind power generation
April 7 — While gas supply failures were largely to blame for millions of Texans being left without power for a week in February 2021, wind power generators didn’t escape the extreme winter storm unscathed.
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Solar Power World: Solar developers are ready to meet U.S. clean energy goals. The grid isn’t.
April 5 — The Biden Administration has big plans for decarbonizing the U.S. electric grid. Developers stand ready to deploy the massive amounts of solar needed to help reach the goal of 100% carbon-free electricity by 2035, but one major issue is blocking their way — the archaic electrical grid isn’t equipped for a huge influx of distributed resources.
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JD Supra: ERCOT Now Requires Cryptocurrency Miners to Provide Information on Their Impact to the Texas Power Grid
April 6 — While these requirements are “interim” in nature, they were implemented just before ERCOT established a task force to determine how to manage the increasing number of cryptocurrency miners connecting to the grid, and to address other issues associated with increased load on the system.
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El Paso Times: (FACT CHECK) Does the Texas grid have 15% more power generation capacity than last year?
April 5 — We rate this as Mostly True.
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Utility Dive: To enhance reliability, Texas regulators will consider standardizing distribution system interconnections
April 4 — The Public Utility Commission of Texas will consider standardizing the distribution system interconnection process for storage and distributed energy resources, in an effort to bring more clean resources onto the grid, increase the system’s reliability and ultimately count DERs towards the resources required to ensure reliability.