Future Proofing Texas' Grid with Distributed Energy Resources

The Texas Advanced Energy Business Alliance retained Converge Strategies and Synapse to characterize the opportunity for distributed energy resources (DERs) to address recent grid reliability and resilience challenges in Texas. In the winter of 2021 and spring of 2022, Texas experienced the dangers of an electric grid dependent on the seamless functioning of a small number of large, weather-vulnerable generation sources.

This whitepaper:

1. Characterizes the risks and vulnerabilities associated with rapidly growing electricity demand, uncertain forecasting, and aging infrastructure,
2. provides case studies of distributed energy technologies that are well-positioned to address these issues, and
3. catalogs several mechanisms to accelerate clean, low-cost, and resilient distributed energy resources in Texas and elsewhere. Synapse led the development of specific policy recommendations that legislators, regulators, and other policymakers can adopt to spur the adoption of DERs in Texas, providing a roadmap for the state on its path to a reliable and resilient grid.

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