Energy Capital Podcast
by Josh Rhodes & Matt Boms
The Texas power grid is being rebuilt in real time. Energy Capital covers the policy fights, market mechanics, and technical decisions shaping what comes next. Hosted by Josh Rhodes (UT Austin) and Matt Boms (TAEBA), with the policymakers, regulators, and researchers at the center of it. Produced by ClarityForge Studios.Topics include ERCOT market operations, grid reliability, renewable integration, distributed energy resources, interconnection and transmission planning, regulatory economics, energy storage, demand response, and the Texas electricity market. New episodes weekly. on Texas energy and power grid issues, featuring interviews with energy professionals, academics, policymakers, and advocates. Produced by ClarityForge Studios. www.texasenergyandpower.com
Episodes
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Turning renewable credits into project financing
A solar or wind farm in ERCOT can watch wholesale prices fall below zero, which makes a project hard to finance. Ever.green sells companies 5- to 10-year contracts for a project’s renewable energy certificates (RECs, credits for megawatt-hours of clean power), giving developers revenue they can...
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Data centers have to earn rural Texas
In August, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered ERCOT to audit the data centers seeking to connect to the grid, pausing ERCOT’s batch zero study of the first cohort for a new process to connect large loads as a group. In September he told the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to halt data center...
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Texas energy heads into the 2027 session
House Bill 5200 would have had ERCOT evaluate grid-enhancing technologies (sensors, software and advanced conductors that raise an existing transmission line’s capacity). It passed the House 128-0 in 2025. The Senate never gave it a hearing. Its author, State Rep. Rafael Anchía (D-Dallas), says…
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The case for lower utility profits
On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Joshua Rhodes talks with Ellis, now research director at MarketClear Utility Policy Research and an expert witness for consumer groups in rate cases. They discuss why the gap persists and how an auction could close it. Chapters 00:00 – Introducing Mark Ellis...
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How far can batteries stretch Texas transmission?
In ERCOT’s new interconnection process for large loads, a data center can connect sooner as a provisional controllable load resource. That is, ERCOT can curtail power above an agreed firm level. A study from Base Power and Piq Energy shows batteries near the transmission lines to a data center...
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Everything moving on the Texas grid
The PUCT approved the southernmost of three 765 kV paths into the Permian on September 13. It has not approved the center path: administrative law judges recommended denying it in August, and chairman Thomas Gleeson sent it back asking what the lines are needed for and what they would save...
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The Texas Energy Fund's first co-op loan
Rayburn Electric Cooperative broke ground in June on a 570 MW gas plant in Sherman, backed by a $411 million Texas Energy Fund loan at 3 percent, the fund’s seventh generation loan and first to a cooperative. Rayburn is also putting batteries in members’ houses. Both run on the same logic…
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What the Sierra Club wants from the Texas grid
Last month the Public Utility Commission of Texas held public hearings on plans to build giant 765 kilovolt transmission lines. The controversial plan drew complaints from influential voices, including Senate Business and Commerce Chairman Charles Schwertner, who asked commissioners to deny the...
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How linear generators can fit into the Texas grid
Wind, solar, and storage are the only new categories of generation to reach the US power system at scale in fifty years. Craig Gordon thinks his company is adding one. Mainspring Energy’s linear generator drives magnets through copper coils rather than burning fuel in a flame, switches between...
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Ten gigawatts are parked in American driveways
About 6 million electric vehicles are on American roads, and roughly 1 million of them can already export power back to the grid. A typical one sits parked about 95 percent of the day, plugged in for 12 to 14 hours while needing 2 to 3 hours of charge. Texas still meets most of that capacity as...
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Wind is keeping West Texas ranches solvent
Cattle prices swing, goat prices swing, and the drought comes whether or not the ranch can afford it. For a fifth-generation West Texas operation, the search for income that holds steady through all of it comes from an unexpected source: the wind. A wind lease pays the same in a dry year as a wet...
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Why some large loads insist on paying their way
Some of the largest electricity buyers in the world have a message for Texas: charge us. The Texas Energy Buyers Alliance was the first organization to propose that large loads pay transmission charges tied to their approved capacity. The idea is to protect other customers as the grid builds out....
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Texas competes on everything except transmission
Texas built a competitive retail electricity market: consumers choose among roughly a hundred providers, and generators build power plants at their own risk with no guaranteed return. Transmission, the high-voltage lines that move power from where it is made to where it is used, runs on a…
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What batch zero settles and what it leaves open
Batch zero stops being theoretical on July 11. That is the day ERCOT’s rule for connecting large new customers takes effect. The new policy replaces a process that involved studying each giant load independently, then ordering restudies when new giant loads joined the queue, leaving projects…
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Why PJM is looking at the Texas grid
ERCOT made a choice years ago that most of the country is now reconsidering. Texas runs an energy-only market with no capacity payments, connects generation through connect-and-manage, sorts out delivery in dispatch, and pushes interconnection risk onto developers. That design is a big part of…
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Inside the PUC's Cost-Allocation Overhaul with PUC Chairman Gleeson
Texas spent five years rebuilding its electrical grid based on the lessons of Winter Storm Uri. Now regulators face a harder question: who pays for the surge of large new customers trying to connect? The projections for electricity demand run far above what will actually get built, and…
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How will data centers pay for power?
Right now, connecting a data center to the grid works like Texas hog season: no defined season, no bag limits, first-come-first-served, file as many interconnection requests as you want. Travis Kavulla’s recent essay in American Affairs argues the power industry needs something closer to deer...
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How Texas decides which data centers to connect
ERCOT now has roughly 445 gigawatts of large loads asking to connect to the Texas grid, a figure so large that Joshua Rhodes says it might as well be infinite, because the system cannot physically build for all of it. To sort real projects from speculative ones, ERCOT is launching a new screening...
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How Texas plans to serve ‘infinite demand’
Texas has spent decades building transmission to serve load growth. The pattern worked when growth rose steadily with new homes, oil and gas operations, and the gradual expansion of the state’s industrial base. It is being tested by a different kind of customer: data centers requesting...
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Austin Energy Enters the Next Phase of Decarbonization
Austin Energy’s power generation hit the 65 percent carbon-free level in 2024, and the municipal utility is targeting 100 percent carbon-free load by 2035, one of the most aggressive clean energy targets of any utility in Texas. Austin Energy is one of the largest municipally owned utilities in…
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Process is Killing Texas Data Center Projects
As the data center buildout in Texas accelerates, the public conversation has fixated on generation, interconnection queues, and gigawatts. But the firms actually structuring these deals see a different problem entirely: process. In this episode, Joshua Rhodes speaks with Maura Yates, chief...
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Texas Bets on Speed, with Gin Kinney
Texas generators and grid operators used to spend a decade or two planning for new power plants. But as Gin Kinney, chief administrative officer at NRG Energy, told Energy Capital Podcast hosts Matt Boms and Josh Rhodes at CERAweek in Houston this year, the company’s planning horizon has…
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Transmission Takes a Decade, Load Doesn't — with Raina Hornaday
ERCOT’s all-time demand record is 85.5 gigawatts. Yet by the end of last year, the grid manager’s interconnection queue included 432 gigawatts of generation requests. ERCOT also received 225 gigawatts-worth of new large load requests last year. The critical factor connecting the two: transmission...
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What a Wind Lease Is Worth Now with Rod Wetsel
In 1999, a rancher walked into a Sweetwater, Texas law office with a 50-page wind lease from landmen in South Dakota. The lawyer, an oil and gas attorney named Rod Wetsel, told him to throw it in the trash. The rancher insisted he take another look. That lease became the first of an estimated...
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Who Pays for the New Grid with Pablo Vegas
ERCOT’s current rulemaking process will shape the Texas grid for decades, driving infrastructure investments that last 30 to 50 years and cost billions of dollars. During this year’s SXSW Texas Future’s Summit in Austin, ERCOT Chief Executive Pablo Vegas sat down with Energy Capital Podcast hosts...
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Texas Growth Is Running Into Power Grid Limits with Katie Coleman
Texas built its electricity market to react quickly to changes in demand, attract private capital, and protect ratepayers from private-sector investment risk. A wave of large load interconnection requests is testing that model. In this conversation, Katie Coleman, a leading Texas energy lawyer…
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SPECIAL REPORT: Texas Feels the Iran Oil Shock with Michael Webber
For a century, the Strait of Hormuz has been one of the world’s key energy choke points. But during the past couple of decades, the U.S. relationship to the shipping lane has changed. In this special episode of the Energy Capital Podcast, Josh Rhodes talks with Michael Webber about what the Iran...
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Build Fast or Fall Behind with Michael Webber
For a long time, the basic story in U.S. energy was stability. Demand growth had flattened, efficiency was doing more work than most people realized, and expansion was steady. Not anymore. In this week’s conversation, Josh Rhodes talks with Michael Webber about what may be the most important…
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The Data Behind Texas Reliability with Max Kanter
Behind the scenes, every few minutes, the ERCOT system generates tens of thousands of price signals, outage updates, and operational reports that demonstrate and drive the cost and availability of electricity. Most of that data is public. But how can Texans access it? This week, Joshua Rhodes…
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Who Pays for Texas Grid Growth? - Roundtable Discussion
Texas’s new era of electricity demand is forcing policymakers to walk an unprecedented tightrope. The state has to keep the lights on – and it has to make sure that Texans can afford to do so.. Massive load growth from data centers, population, and electrification is teeing up existential…
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The New Rules Behind ERCOT Prices with Andrew Reimers
Texas keeps adding load, adding generation, and adding complexity. But attracting the next wave of investment often comes down to a crucial question: How does ERCOT use market forces – especially signals that determine where energy prices are set – to boost reliability on the grid? In this…
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Stop Heating Texas Like It’s 1985 (with Kurt Heim)
Every time a winter storm hits, Texans run through a mental checklist: gather more blankets, drip the pipes, and hope the grid holds up. Kurt Heim, Vice President of Environmental Advancement at Daikin Comfort Technologies North America Inc., understands why that anxiety stuck after 2021’s...
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Texas Got Tested, Grid Stayed Upright
Texas just got another winter gut-check—not on the level of the deadly 2021 freeze, but still with enough ice, outages, and anxious headlines to remind everyone how fast confidence can evaporate. In this episode, Matt Boms and Josh Rhodes unpack what they saw in real time. The biggest takeaways…
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Is Texas Ready for Winter Now? (with Will McAdams)
In two weeks, Texas will observe the five-year anniversary of Winter Storm Uri — the devastating 2021 freeze that drove electricity demand to unprecedented heights, froze gas lines and plants, and triggered a blackout that darkened nearly half of the state. The anniversary will come just days…
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More Power that's Faster and Fairer — Roundtable Discussion
Texas is not short on energy. Texas is short on time. New load is arriving faster than the grid can plan, permit, and build, raising a question that will shape our state’s future: can Texas grow without sacrificing reliability or pushing costs onto the wrong people? That was the backdrop for our...
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Flexibility Driving Reliability and Affordability with Matt Boms
This episode is a little different. As I wrote on Friday: this is both a transition and an expansion. Several folks will be stepping up to use this platform and I couldn’t be more excited to hear what comes next. A platform, now with more places to stand Archimedes said: “Give me a place to stand...
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How Much Are Texans' Power Bills Going Up? with TEPRI's Margo Weisz
Everyone’s talking about the cost of power lately. But the Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute has been studying, talking, writing, and working to do something about it, for over a decade. In recent research, TEPRI found that 65 percent of low and moderate income Texans are cutting back on...
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Replay: Using Wasted Energy to Power AI with Crusoe's Cully Cavness
Thanksgiving Week RepostThis episode originally aired in June 2024. We’re resurfacing it because the core idea discussed here were timely then and even more timely now. We’ve also refreshed the audio, with improved mixing and mastering for a clearer, smoother listen. Crusoe has scaled…
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How AI Data Centers Can Go From Villain to Hero with Varun Sivaram
“Everyone hates data centers.” That was the subject line on the email newsletter from Heatmap Daily the day before I sat down with Dr. Varun Sivaram, co-founder and CEO of Emerald AI. Communities see huge new loads coming onto the grid, hear about billions in new infrastructure, and worry that...
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It's Going to Happen First in Texas with Nat Bullard (Part 2)
This is part 2 of my conversation with Nat Bullard. Check out Part 1 here: We talk a lot about the grid of the future. The truth is, that future is already showing up in Texas. Batteries are being built at record pace, data centers are chasing cheap and reliable power, and Texans are adding...
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Information Is Infrastructure with Nat Bullard (Part 1)
This is Part 1 of my conversation with Nat. Part 2 will be out next Wednesday. The Video is Live on YouTube Texas has plenty of energy stories. The harder part is finding the signal through the noise of endless filings. That is why Nat Bullard’s new venture, Halcyon, matters. It turns piles of...
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Building a Solar Supply Chain in Texas with T1's CEO Daniel Barcelo
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com Most solar panels are imported from China which now has the ability to manufacture over a terawatt (1,000 gigawatts) of solar modules every year — roughly equal to the entire installed base of generation in...
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Innovation and Investment in ERCOT: Recorded Live from GCPA
The full video is on Youtube Texas isn’t just projecting future load growth; it’s happening now. Maura Yates of Mothership Innovations set the stage for our discussion at GCPA’s Fall conference earlier this month in Austin. “We are looking at meters that are 800 megawatts on a single meter……
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How Data Centers Can Strengthen the Texas Grid with Camus Energy CEO Astrid Atkinson
Watch the Conversation on YouTube Headlines warn that data centers are straining the Texas grid. The reality is more interesting: data centers — through their own flexibility and by supporting distributed flexibility markets — can strengthen the grid. I explored that topic and a lot more with...
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Beyond the Tax Credit Cliff with Freedom Solar CEO Bret Biggart
The federal 30% solar tax credit has driven demand for solar but it’s about to expire. And when it does, some worry the bottom will fall out of the market. But what’s actually emerging looks less like a collapse and more like a shift which could lead to bigger growth down the road. In this…
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NRG's Gigawatt VPP in Texas with Travis Kavulla
Texas load is rising fast, supply chains are tight, and the cheapest near-term resource is demand we shape intentionally. But are the right economic signals there to bring this resource to scale? Texas has a highly competitive power supply market, but the demand side is severely underdeveloped.…
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AI, Outage Risks, and Market Opportunities with Lynne Kiesling (Part 2)
In Part 1 of my conversation with economist Lynne Kiesling, we traced how monopoly utilities and central planning helped electrify the country. That model worked. Economies of scale and guaranteed returns brought capital into the system, and within a few decades, nearly every home had…
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Why the Old Utility Business Model Doesn’t Fit Anymore with Lynne Kiesling (Part 1)
Over a hundred years ago, the monopoly business utility model emerged as the one that could attract sufficient capital to electrify everything. The monopoly utility business was championed by Thomas Edison’s protégé and early leader of ComEd in Chicago, Sam Insull. It worked. By mid-century, most...
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Why Are Energy Bills Rising So Fast? A Conversation with Charles Hua
Watch the Full Conversation with Graphs on YouTube (Updated) Utility bills are rising faster than ever. In the first half of 2025 alone, utilities requested $29 billion in rate increases, already a record for any full year, with months still to go. That’s more than double the pace of 2024. If...
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WATCH: Texas Power Rush
This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit www.texasenergyandpower.com This is my recent presentation on the latest trends in Texas energy and power for subscribers called the “Texas Power Rush,” followed by a Q&A.
About this show
The Texas power grid is being rebuilt in real time. Energy Capital covers the policy fights, market mechanics, and technical decisions shaping what comes next. Hosted by Josh Rhodes (UT Austin) and Matt Boms (TAEBA), with the policymakers, regulators, and researchers at the center of it. Produced by ClarityForge Studios.Topics include ERCOT market operations, grid reliability, renewable integration, distributed energy resources, interconnection and transmission planning, regulatory economics, energy storage, demand response, and the Texas electricity market. New episodes weekly. on Texas energy and power grid issues, featuring interviews with energy professionals, academics, policymakers, and advocates. Produced by ClarityForge Studios.
www.texasenergyandpower.com
Hosted by
Josh Rhodes & Matt Boms
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