Expert: Solar energy is a necessary solution to summer power grid insecurity in Texas

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It's only going to get hotter in Houston — can the grid take it? Switching to solar is a way to avoid having to worry about that question, says this expert. Photo courtesy of Freedom Solar

You know the old adage: "If you don't like the weather here, wait five minutes." Texas weather is not just unpredictable; it can be downright bipolar. I don't need to remind you of the knockout punch Old Man Winter delivered last February, even to parts of the state where hard freezes are few and a "snow event" usually amounts to a dusting. It will be a long time before Texans forget spending a week without power in single-digit temperatures — huddled together in their homes under mountains of blankets — with no heat, no way to bathe or cook, and no escape.

The massive power outages of Valentine's Day week spurred public outrage and a full-throated demand that state leaders take decisive steps to make Texas' electric grid sustainable. The legislature was only a month into its 140-day regular session at the time, but still failed to do anything substantial to fix the grid before adjourning May 31.

Now — well ahead of the hottest days of summer — Texans are wondering why the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is already asking them to set their thermostats at 78 degrees, turn off lights, avoid using their ovens or doing laundry in the evenings, and otherwise conserve energy. It was ERCOT's second such call since April. Some local energy companies have recommended setting thermostats even higher, and local rolling blackouts have continued in Dallas, Houston, and elsewhere in the state throughout the months of June and July. That may be fine for some people during Texas' scorching summer heat, but for others, it is untenable. For the elderly or infirmed, it could be deadly.

Experts have warned the grid is unreliable, the system is strained, and homeowners and businesses hover at near-constant risk for blackouts, unless the state does more to weatherize the grid, bring more generators back online, and provide more emergency backup power. Meanwhile, when temperatures hit triple digits and stay there for days, the blackout risks will skyrocket.

But there is one obvious solution to grid instability that will enable Texans to keep their homes and businesses comfortably cool during the hot summer months ahead, without setting their thermostats higher or timing their activities to government guidelines. Widespread distributed generation of solar energy, instead of the current emphasis on remotely located utility-scale solar, would provide a highly effective, long-term solution to decreasing strain on the ERCOT power grid.

That means dramatically increasing the number of solar installations on residential and commercial properties statewide. Consider the distance and infrastructure required to bring power from a West Texas solar farm to the state's big cities. That's not only a costly undertaking, it exposes the system to many vulnerabilities along the way. It makes more sense to install solar panels on-site, behind the meter, and pair them with storage for backup power.

The logic is simple: Increasing the number of homes and businesses with on-site solar power would decrease the burden on the grid and help insulate it against failure. Further, by installing home batteries such as the Tesla Powerwall for backup power, residents can control their own power supply and ensure its reliability, even during extreme weather events—summer or winter.

These technologies are cost-efficient and readily available today. A few months ago, Congress extended the 26 percent federal solar investment tax credit (ITC) — which also applies to batteries paired with solar — through 2021 (dropping to 22 percent in 2022), making the move to solar and backup power even more sensible.

State leaders have tried to lay the blame for last winter's power outages on renewable energy. But failures of natural gas power plants, not renewable generators, caused the grid failures that led to those deadly blackouts.

On July 6, months after declaring "everything that needed to be done was done to fix the power grid in Texas," Governor Abbott ordered the PUC to take steps to overhaul the state's electric system. But the solutions he's offering—like constructing new coal, gas, and nuclear power plants and building their transmission lines faster—are giveaways to the fossil fuel industry and will take a long time to complete. Texas needs reliable power NOW.

Meanwhile, state officials are increasingly emphasizing conserving power during extreme temperatures, which suggests they don't even believe their assurances that no more blackouts lie ahead. On-site solar power is the obvious solution, both today and for the long-term health of our rapidly growing state and rapidly warming planet.

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Bret Biggart is CEO of Austin-based Freedom Solar, the leading turnkey solar energy installer in Texas, providing high-quality, cost-effective, reliable solar solutions for the residential and commercial markets.

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UH Health names leader of new digital health institute

new exec

Recently launched UH Health has named the first-ever executive director of its new Institute for Digital Healthcare Transformation at the University of Houston.

Beto López has been tapped to lead the new initiative that aims to help develop and commercialize health care technologies centered around university research.

Launched in August, the Institute for Digital Healthcare Transformation leans on experts from UH’s engineering, medicine, business, law and other departments and will connect with industry partners. It will initially focus on mobile health applications, sensors, wearables and artificial intelligence, according to UH.

“Most digital health initiatives and commercialization efforts start with the technology and hope adoption follows. But the translation gap isn't a science problem — it’s a scaffolding problem between researchers, the community and the market,” López said in a news release. “I've spent the past 10 years building that scaffolding in places that weren’t wired for it, and I'm looking forward to building it here at UH to help ensure new health care technologies reach the people and communities that can benefit from them most.”

López previously spent 10 years at San Francisco-based innovation consultancy company IDEO, where he led over 100 projects for Fortune 500 companies and public agencies. He co-founded and served as managing director of the Design Institute for Health at UT Austin’s Dell Medical School; and also co-founded a social venture studio/venture capital fund focused on health care innovation. He worked alongside Houston’s Legacy Community Health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Beto understands that breakthrough technology alone doesn't transform health care — it has to be designed around the needs of patients, providers and communities and have a clear path into practice,” Jonathan McCullers, vice president for health affairs at UH, added in the news release. “His experience spanning academic health care and venture capital equips him to bring together researchers, health care organizations, entrepreneurs and investors. This makes him uniquely suited to lead this institute and help turn the university's innovation into solutions that improve people's lives.”

The University of Houston launched UH Health, its new cross-disciplinary academic venture, in July. It aims to bring together the university's health-related education, research and community impact under one umbrella.

ExxonMobil gets approval for $5B Texas Gulf Coast carbon capture project

CCS Expansion

Spring-based ExxonMobil has won approval from the Texas Railroad Commission for a $5 billion carbon capture and storage project in East Texas.

Dominic Genetti, senior vice president of CCS at ExxonMobil, told The Financial Times, which broke the news, that the Railroad Commission’s action is a “major milestone” that lets the company keep expanding along the Gulf Coast. In a 2-1 vote, commissioners authorized a carbon sequestration permit for the project.

“The Railroad Commission clearly recognizes the important role carbon capture and storage can play in meeting growing global demand for lower-carbon products while supporting new jobs and economic growth,” Genetti said.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved ExxonMobil’s Rose CCS project last year.

The project will enable the company to inject about 53 metric tons of industrial customers’ carbon emissions into three underground wells it drilled in the Beaumont-Port Arthur area. Over a 13-year period, ExxonMobil plans to inject about 4 million metric tons per year into the Fleming and Upper Frio rock formations, according to Carbon Herald.

ExxonMobil says it owns the world’s first and largest CCS system, comprising 1,300 miles of CO2 pipeline and secure storage sites. Seventy percent of the pipelines are along the Gulf Coast.

The company ramped up its CCS business in 2023 with the $4.9 billion purchase of Denbury, which owned about 1,000 miles of CO2 pipelines.

“Our expertise, combined with Denbury’s talent and CO2 pipeline network, expands our low-carbon leadership and best positions us to meet the decarbonization needs of industrial customers while also reducing emissions in our own operations,” ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said when the deal closed.

In January, Genetti wrote in a post on ExxonMobil’s website that the company is committed to CCS “for the long haul.”

“CCS is not new technology, but it’s flown relatively under the radar compared with the attention that production of hydrocarbons commands,” he wrote. “Now, as the world becomes more aware of the need to reduce emissions, CCS finally has a brighter spotlight and a broader runway to scale up.”

The company also announced this week that it has begun CCS operations at a direct reduced iron facility in Convent, Louisiana. The project will capture, transport and store up to 800,000 metric tons of CO2 per year, according to the company.

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This article first appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

Houston researchers develop breakthrough device that could bypass spinal injuries

breakthrough research

Scientists at Houston Methodist have announced a significant leap forward for spinal cord injury recovery.

The researchers have developed a device that essentially bypasses spinal injuries, allowing signals from previously “lost” functions to reach the brain, a new study published in Nature Communications shows.

“Most current technologies try to improve whatever function remains after a spinal cord injury,” Dr. Damiano Barone, assistant professor of neurosurgery in the Department of Neurosurgery at Houston Methodist and co-lead on the study, said in a news release. “Our goal is different. Rather than fixing the injury itself, we want to bypass it completely and create an alternative route for signals to travel.”

The study involved a single ultrathin circumferential electrode array made to conform around the spinal cord without penetrating neural tissue, which was implanted into rodent and pig models with spinal injuries. The electrode array was able to interpret motor, sensory and autonomic signals around the injury. Think of it as a set of detours that restore road access to isolated towns after a disaster destroys the highway instead of just rebuilding the highway.

Over the course of three days, the arrays detected signals of intended movement from low-frequency spinal oscillations with more than 94 percent accuracy. This worked across species and was replicated in feasibility studies on human cadavers.

This research could serve as a new foundation for neuroprosthetic implants that could restore connectivity to the 2.5 million people worldwide suffering from spinal injuries that result in loss of ability. Future development could result in everything from restored organ function to mobility, according to Houston Methodist.

George Malliaras, the Prince Professor of Technology in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge, who co-led the study, sees it as a fundamental restructuring of the science of spinal trauma.

“This could represent a paradigm change in how we think about spinal cord injuries,” Malliaras said. “Instead of starting from the idea that what is lost is gone forever, this approach asks whether we can restore function by carrying the signal around the injury.”

Further work involving laboratory models will need to be completed before launching human trials.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health, Houston Methodist Katz Investigator Award, Helaers Research Award and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council helped support the study. Other collaborators on the study include Salim Hadwe, Ruben Serrano, George Psaltakis, Margaux Forner, Chaeyeon Lee, Sydney Swedick, Moleca Ghnnam, Tawfique Hasan and Alejandro Carnicer-Lombarte from the University of Cambridge; and Anton Banta and Xueer Zhang from Houston Methodist.

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