How renewables are saving Texans billions

State comparisons and metrics

• Debate over whether Texas is truly “ahead” in renewables hinges on metrics: absolute deployment vs share of renewables vs political talk.
• Some argue California is unfairly maligned given its ~40%+ renewable share; others point to states like Washington with >70% renewables (mostly hydro).
• Disagreement over whether hydro “deserves credit”: one view says it’s trivial where possible and not replicable elsewhere; another warns that downplaying it helps anti-dam activism and decommissioning.
• Washington’s hydro is noted as mostly old federal projects; some argue the state deserves no current policy credit, especially as some dams are being removed for ecological reasons.

ERCOT markets, crises, and blame

• One side praises ERCOT for light-touch regulation and strong incentives that attracted massive renewables and batteries.
• Critics focus on the 2021 winter storm: inadequate winterization, poor load-shedding execution that caused prolonged outages and deaths, sky‑high wholesale caps ($9–10k/MWh), bankruptcies, and public bailouts.
• Long sub‑thread argues about how much ERCOT versus the gas market caused extreme gas prices and trader windfalls, and whether ERCOT overcharged by keeping prices at the cap after most outages ended.
• There’s repeated insistence from industry voices to distinguish electricity and gas markets and to assign responsibility correctly between ERCOT, the PUCT, and the Railroad Commission.

Conservative politics and energy policy

• One commenter frames the “aggregate conservative position” as: no state funding, wait for private-sector economical solutions.
• Others counter with examples of Texas bills that would explicitly disadvantage renewables (setback rules, capacity quotas favoring “dispatchable”/gas) and point out pro‑fossil rhetoric from national leaders.
• Broader point: energy markets are policy-defined (e.g., fixed-price solar contracts), so there is no neutral “true market”; design reflects desired outcomes.

Grid-scale batteries and storage debates

• Strong enthusiasm for batteries as “the best thing happening”: shaving peaks, arbitrage, stabilizing grids, and enabling more renewables.
• Counterpoint: Texas ancillary-service markets may already be saturated; many batteries now earn most revenue on a handful of extreme days.
• Discussion of seasonal storage as an unsolved or partially solved challenge (Dunkelflaute, winter doldrums; hydrogen/methane, heat storage) with disagreement on how far along real-world deployment is.
• Some skepticism that batteries always reduce carbon if they can charge on coal, answered by claims that in well-functioning markets they charge at cheap/clean times and discharge at expensive/dirty times—but only if externalities are priced properly.

Pumped hydro vs batteries and Texas geography

• Suggestion that Texas should build pumped-storage hydro like TVA’s Raccoon Mountain.
• Pushback: Texas already has many dams, limited water, long droughts, and heavy municipal withdrawals; “no water to pump.”
• Supporters note pumped storage can be closed-loop between two reservoirs and offer very cheap large-scale storage where geography fits; skeptics argue batteries are now cheaper, more flexible, and faster to deploy.

Grid isolation and interconnection

• Several note Texas’s isolation from Eastern/Western interconnects as a structural limitation: can’t export surpluses or import from neighboring wind/sun regimes, lowering the ceiling on renewables and resilience.
• Comparisons: Finland cited as having higher renewable shares and similar or lower prices thanks partly to nuclear and being embedded in a larger grid; UK cited as more interconnected than Texas but still with high prices, nuclear buildouts, and policy missteps.

Do renewables increase or decrease costs?

• One camp claims that high renewable shares inherently raise costs because you must pay for renewables, batteries that often sit idle, and fossil plants kept for backup.
• Others respond that if solar/battery total cost per kWh undercuts gas fuel cost, adding them strictly saves money even with underused gas capacity; fixed costs of legacy plants are there regardless.
• Long dispute over whether recent price spikes in places like the UK and Texas are primarily due to renewables, grid isolation, policy “big bangs,” or fossil-fuel and capacity pricing.
• Some point to Texas investors’ preference for new solar, wind, and batteries as revealed evidence of their competitiveness; skeptics argue this is distorted by subsidies and insensitive to consumer prices.

Other notes

• Individual anecdote: moving from ERCOT to a different Texas operator (MISO/Entergy) halved one user’s bill, suggesting fuel mix and legacy assets still massively impact prices.
• Observations that the UK’s electricity remains noticeably more expensive than Texas’s, with some envy of Texas’s renewables-driven savings.
• Meta-aside that the blog author is using ChatGPT to fact-check commenters, mirroring social-media “AI fact-check” trends.