I'm curious what part of this you thought was an indictment on Texas.
ERCOT has the most generator-friendly interconnection process in the nation and leads the country in both renewable generation and utility-scale solar installations.
Mineral rights are dominant over surface rights in most jurisdictions, including other states like California. To call it "insane" just shows how little experience Mr. R has in land development.
OP lost the game playing on easy mode because he was purely chasing tax breaks with zero experience. The area OP is trying to develop in is a QOZ for a reason; he should have expected there to be upgrades necessary to delivery that level of power to a substation in an area where nothing else is going on.
OP is actually lucky that this project failed. Expecting to get the ISO-average solar PPA price for a project in Coleman County is nuts. This solar farm would have lost even more money had he continued.
> Mineral rights are dominant over surface rights in most jurisdictions, including other states like California. To call it "insane" just shows how little experience Mr. R has in land development.
The insane part is the management of mineral rights, shattering into a thousand untracked shards and too ruinous to insure against without waivers. Not the existence of them.
> The area OP is trying to develop in is a QOZ for a reason; he should have expected there to be upgrades necessary to delivery that level of power to a substation in an area where nothing else is going on.
The biggest problem was that it still needed a ton of limitation even with upgrades.
You think either of those problems are Texas-specific?
Seems like people who zero industry experience got a taste of common issues that renewable developers deal with on a daily basis nationwide and decided that it must be Texas’ fault.
Not arguing against your overall point, but Texas is a well-known lesson in failed power grid management, market design, and policy - which in combination is the driving force behind the current economic energy opportunities.
I say this as someone in the energy industry who operates many renewable assets across the U.S., some in Texas, and participates in the markets. Texas is a power nightmare, worst in the country. Everyone in Texas is investing in desperate immediate need and toa lesser degree, future potential, but that potential isn’t here yet and the cost of wholesale power spikes to egregious levels regularly.
I’m not even sure what your last sentence means (you got caught on the wrong side of a PPA during the winter storm I assume?).
I’ve been a market participant in every American ISO for over a decade and have helped build both thermal and renewable generation. I couldn’t disagree more and the numbers don’t back up your story.
ERCOT has the most generator-friendly interconnection process in the nation and leads the country in both renewable generation and utility-scale solar installations.
Mineral rights are dominant over surface rights in most jurisdictions, including other states like California. To call it "insane" just shows how little experience Mr. R has in land development.
OP lost the game playing on easy mode because he was purely chasing tax breaks with zero experience. The area OP is trying to develop in is a QOZ for a reason; he should have expected there to be upgrades necessary to delivery that level of power to a substation in an area where nothing else is going on.
OP is actually lucky that this project failed. Expecting to get the ISO-average solar PPA price for a project in Coleman County is nuts. This solar farm would have lost even more money had he continued.