The weather forecast predicts sunny – and blistering hot – days in D-FW for the next week. That means more high temperatures and more stress on the power grid as Texans rely on air-conditioning to stay cool.

But as you hide from the sun, make sure to thank it, as well — this summer, solar power is helping keep air-conditioning on across the state.

On a recent weekday, ERCOT reported nearly 20% of the grid’s electricity was coming from solar power. As demand for power continues to grow and summers keep getting hotter, solar and other renewable energy sources are becoming more significant parts of Texas’ grid, according to ERCOT and Texas energy specialists.

The vast majority of the state’s solar power comes from large, utility-scale plants with many panels. Michael Webber, a professor of energy resources at the University of Texas at Austin, is impressed by how much renewable energy is contributing to the grid this summer. “It’s a lot of gas we’re not burning [and] a lot of pollution we’re not emitting,” he said.

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Scientists in Texas and elsewhere continue to improve solar technology and reduce costs. And it’s working, researchers say. Data from the Electricity, Markets and Policy department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories shows Texas is increasing its capacity to produce solar power more quickly than any other state.

But Webber and other researchers say politics and economics, more than technology, are holding solar back from even broader adoption.

And despite ERCOT’s record-breaking production of renewable energy this summer, leadership cautions that oil and gas energy production aren’t going anywhere.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, meanwhile, is concerned that relying on solar and other renewable energy sources is risky. The foundation argues that unpredictable resources like the wind and the sun mean unpredictable supply.

“As we become more dependent on weather-dependent generation on the grid… reliability has become more of an issue,” said Jason Isaac, the director of Life:Powered, a power policy initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “That’s kind of frightening.”

Isaac argues that there are hidden costs to solar and other renewable energy. For instance, he said that taxpayers also need to pay to keep oil and gas power plants available as backup if the sun isn’t out.

Power companies also tend to build solar plants far from the areas where the most electricity is needed. “You’re going to go where you can find the cheapest land possible that’s… sunny,” Isaac said. This means higher transmission costs to get the electricity to the urban areas with the highest demand, he said.

Gov. Greg Abbott and other Republican legislators have also expressed skepticism about renewable resources. After the 2021 winter storm that resulted in widespread power outages in Texas, Abbott blamed the outages on failure of wind and solar energy. It has since been shown that much of the lost supply was from coal and gas plants that went offline during the storm.

‘We have the sunshine’

William Shafarman, director of the Institute of Energy Conservation, a solar power research center at the University of Delaware, says power generated by the sun doesn’t cause the same kind of pollution as power generated by natural gas or by burning coal.

The sun is also renewable because it isn’t going away anytime soon. According to Shafarman, coal and natural gas will eventually get used up, making them less sustainable in the long run. “Our planet is burning up…and we need to generate energy without putting carbon in the atmosphere,” he said.

In 2022, ERCOT, which provides power to 90% of Texas, reported that less than 6% of the grid’s electricity came from solar power. This might not sound like much, especially given the abundance of sun in the state. But this percentage is increasing exponentially.

The 2022 statistics show that Texas produces 10 times as much solar power as five years ago and nearly 200 times as much as 10 years ago.

The percentage of Texas power that comes from solar is also much higher in the middle of the day, when there’s the most available sun. In monthly and annual averages, the percentage is lower because it includes power used at night and on low-generation days.

Webber says solar power is helping fill an increasing demand for energy in the state. “We have a growing population and a growing economy,” he said. This gives Texas the opportunity to build new, renewable energy plants to power the grid. “We have a lot of really cheap, flat, sunny, windy land,” he said. “[And] we have the sunshine.”

The U.S. Energy Information Administration, which collects data on power generation across the country, says that California produces the most utility-scale solar energy of all the states. But if solar expansion in Texas continues at its current rate, it will soon surpass California.