The Legislature Enters the Final Month; Grid Discussions Gain Momentum

With a little less than four weeks to go in the Texas legislative session, things are picking up steam.

A Late Entry

In a very rare move, Chair Schwertner introduced a new bill, Senate Bill 2627, yesterday, and then he passed it out of committee today. The bill filing deadline was nearly two months ago, but the Senate is famously loose with its rules. Expect this bill on the floor very soon, perhaps as soon as this week.

SB 2627 would provide zero-interest loans and a cash grant (Sen. Schwertner is calling it “a completion bonus,” though the bill is silent on the amount of the bonus) for entities that will build new gas plants. The bill currently explicitly excludes energy storage.

It’s unclear why the Senate would exclude storage, particularly various forms of Long Duration Energy Storage, which are not yet otherwise being built in Texas. An example is Form’s iron-air battery, which can last for 100 hours — these kind of subsidies might prompt Form to take a look at Texas for one of its first deployments.