Austin in position to adapt new renewable energy goals

Pacing towards a clean energy goal, Austin City Council has passed a plan to produce 55 percent of its power from renewable energy by 2025.

According to the proposal, the municipal utility Austin Energy has chalked out certain future plans such as 600 megawatts of utility-scale solar projects.

In addition, 150 megawatts of additional projects will be finalized after cost-benefit analysis to be held next year.

Furthermore, 200 megawatts of locally sourced solar is also planned, out of which a fifty percent should be customer-owned.

Besides, it is expected that energy efficiency and demand response improvements provided through smart grids will supplement another 800 megawatts over the next ten years.

The plan also includes a10 megawatts of storage technology from batteries to thermal storage, with further research on the possibility of bringing another 200 megawatts through that line.

This is a road map where the use of coal and gas plants will be kept to a lowest minimum for energy production, favoring renewable and solar, according to Austin authorities.

According to the final strategy, by the end of 2022 the coal-fired Fayette Power Plant will be shut down completely.

In another development, the older units of Austin Energy’s Decker natural gas plant having 500-megawatts of combined cycle technology will be replaced.

In effect, the actual plan was for curbing out the Decker plant totally, which got dropped later.

Further approval or financial allotment for any gas plant project in future within the city will be done only after conducting a third-party independent study, revealed the authorities.

The plan is expected to cut carbon emissions from Austin’s electricity generation by 75 to 80 percent by 2025.

Recently, Austin entered into a contract with Recurrent Energy for a 150-megawatt solar plant at a lowest cost of five cents per kilowatt-hour.

In other initiative, working with the City Council, Austin Energy has decided to reinstate the solar credits.

The plan is to roll back the unused Value of Solar credits into the next calendar year, as well as from month to month until the customer moves or closes their account.

From January 2015 onwards, residents producing energy will also get paid more for the energy they produce.

The Value of Solar (VoS) will increase from 10.7 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to 11.3 cents per kWh.

Texas has some of the lowest prices for small-scale solar installation in the country.

Sabeena Wahid
[email protected]