Solar Exploding Across the Texas Plain

Texas has long been known as oil country, but the newest energy boom in the state is a bit more celestial nature. Move over oil executives: solar is moving to town. Solar power is now competitive in the energy market as the cost of generating and disseminating solar continues to decline as the technology improves.

Despite a lack of state financing through incentives to utility companies to either buy solar or build solar projects, the renewable energy is taking off in Texas. About $1 billion in financing has been secured for new solar power plants on the southern edge of the Permian Basin oil field in Pecos County — halfway between San Antonio and El Paso.

Multiple Farms

According to the Wall Street Journal, OCI Solar Power LLC recently installed posts to support a farm that will span the lengths and width of 900 football fields alongside the oil fields. First Solar Inc. has also secured financing to lease property adjacent to Solar Power’s developing farm, which would be the company’s second installation in the area.

Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar Inc., is preparing to build at another nearby site and SunEdison Inc. has presented Pecos county commissioners with plans for an additional farm, per the Wall Street Journal.

An Arizona company, which led the solar charge in 2014, is currently producing approximately 30 megawatts of power from 400,000 panels situated just west of the established oil fields.

Texas Investing in the Future

The Texas Electric Reliability Council of Texas expects solar financing and production to increase drastically over the next 14 years. The council expects that solar farms in Texas will generate somewhere between 10,000 and 12,500 megawatts in energy–approximately the same amount of energy created by all current U.S. solar farms combined.

To support this expected expansion, Texas has already invested $6.9 billion in new transmission lines — originally slated for wind power — to carry the renewable resource across the flat Texas landscape.

Oil may be an old hand in Texas, but the new kid on the block is lighting up the industry and making waves in the fields of west Texas.

Alex Kirkwood is a renewable energy writer for Fusion 360, an SEO and content marketing agency. Information provided by Elements Capital Group. Follow on Twitter