From OilPrice:
Borden County, Texas, is set to become the home of the world’s largest battery storage system in 2021.
IP Juno, a unit of Intersect Power LLC, has recently outlined plans to build a 495-MW storage system together with a solar farm of the same size in Borden County, a small community in West Texas in the very heart of the most important U.S. oil field, the Permian.
It’s hard to miss the ironic interrelation between the booming Texas oil production and the rise of renewables in the most prolific U.S. shale basin. As the West Texas electricity grid strains under surging demand to power oil and gas operations, some of the new capacity installations in the coming years, including the world’s biggest battery according to Bloomberg, will help provide more electricity to the grid from solar power.
Soaring oil production is set to help the case for renewables in Texas, while wind and solar are set to help meet growing electricity demand for oil and gas drilling.
According to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the operator of most of the Texas grid, the planned 495-MW solar plus storage system will boost the Texas cumulative battery capacity from 89 MW currently to 584 MW in 2021, when the project is expected to be ready.
The new solar-and-storage facility could help raise the Texas capacity and ease the pressure on the grid at a time when booming oil production continues to drive power demand in the oil patch.
Permian oil producers need a lot more electricity to power well production than they did just a few years ago. And the West Texas electricity grid—which wasn’t planned for so heavy a load—is straining to catch up with power demand. While drillers have flocked again to the hottest U.S. shale play, electricity infrastructure and transmission grids in West Texas need years to expand to keep reliable power supply on....MORE
“Significant oil and gas development in far West Texas continues to drive increasing electricity demand in Texas. The annual growth rate in peak demand in West Texas is forecasted to be around 8 percent through 2023, whereas ERCOT’s annual system-wide load growth rate is 2 percent during the same time,” ERCOT said at the end of last year....
