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 lines. But the transmission improvements that would accommodate such dramatic grid growth aren’t growing nearly as fast. In a conversation with Energy Capital Podcast host Micalah Spenrath, renewable energy veteran Raina Hornaday describes transmission as a planning and construction constraint that load growth is no longer willing to wait for.

Raina has developed more than a gigawatt of renewable energy across Texas over the past 20 years. She founded Caprock Renewables and Fortress Microgrid, overseeing the creation of both utility-scale and distributed generation resources.

In this episode, she describes a shift in how generation and load projects are being created: she calls it, “the energization of land.”

She and Micalah also discuss how transmission lead times are prompting distributed generation resources to grow quickly, even as utility-scale solar continues to boom, and how institutional knowledge is moving from utilities to private developers, reshaping project delivery.

Raina also credits battery storage resources added in the past five years for easing the price volatility that used to define ERCOT’s energy market. She says market adjustments made in the past five months have created a tailwind for storage projects.

And she and Micalah discuss Senate Bill 819, a measure filed in the last legislative session that would have imposed strict siting requirements on renewables projects and likely hobbled Texas’s nation-leading renewables industry. While the bill drew widespread opposition and ultimately died, Raina expects a similar proposal to be filed again in next year’s legislative session.

She says education — about the tax base that renewables create for rural communities, the revenue that renewable energy projects offer landowners, and the workforce they create across the state — is key, both for blocking anti-energy proposals and propelling the state’s economic and energy future.

Timestamps

* 00:00 - Introduction & Raina Hornaday

* 00:54 - Caprock Origins: Family, Wind, and the Met Tower

* 03:52 - Why South Texas for Utility-Scale Solar

* 05:36 - The Landowner Pitch and Family Legacy

* 09:06 - Boutique Developer in a Shifting Policy Landscape

* 13:00 - Education, Powerhouse Texas, and American Farmland Trust

* 16:14 - Agrivoltaics and Solar Sheep as a Growing Industry

* 17:29 - ERCOT Interconnection Bottlenecks

* 20:57 - SB 819, Tariffs, and Real-Time Co-Optimization

* 23:21 - Testimony, Schools, and the Workforce Pipeline

* 28:55 - Distributed Batteries and Storage Economics After Uri

* 32:18 - Why Battery Projects Get Canceled

* 34:22 - What Texas Needs Next: Flexibility and Distributed Generation

* 36:50 - Closing Thoughts

Resources

Guest & Org

* Raina Hornaday (LinkedIn)

* Caprock Renewables (Website - LinkedIn)

* CleanTX - Raina Hornaday Board Profile

Organizations Discussed

* ERCOT

* Public Utility Commission of Texas

* American Farmland Trust - Texas Smart Solar

* PowerHouse Texas

* CleanTX

* Texas A&M AgriLife Extension

* Texas Tech University - Energy Commerce and Renewable Energy

Company & Industry News

* ERCOT’s large load queue jumped almost 300% last year - Utility Dive

* ERCOT Goes Live with Real-Time Co-optimization Plus Batteries

* ERCOT’s large load queue has nearly quadrupled in a single year - Latitude Media

* ERCOT Announces Strategic Organizational Changes to Support Grid Reliability

Books & Articles Discussed

* The Economic Impact of Renewable Energy and Energy Storage Investments Across Texas - Joshua Rhodes, IdeaSmiths

* Texas Renewables Interactive Map - txrenewables.net

* Supporting Expansion of Agrivoltaics Using Smart Solar Principles - Southern SARE Grant

* Texas Senate Bill 819 - 89th Legislature

Related Posts by Texas Energy & Power

* Texas Power Rush

* It’s a Transition and an Expansion

* Flexibility Driving Reliability and Affordability with Matt Boms

Transcript

Micalah Spenrath (00:05.614)

Hi everybody and welcome back to the Energy Capital Podcast. I’m your host, Michaela. And today I have with me Reina Hornaday, who is a veteran renewable energy developer with over 20 years of experience advancing the energy transition across Texas, bringing more than one gigawatt of renewable energy projects into commercial operation. As the founder and co-owner of Caprock Renewables and Fortress Microgrid and Caprock DLE, a direct lithium extraction venture developed in partnership with Texas Tech University,

Micalah Spenrath (00:35.702)

Rayna leads the development of distributed solar generation storage and microgrid infrastructure across the state. Super excited to have you on the podcast, Rayna, and we’ll hop right in. So in case I missed anything in your intro, give us a quick introduction to your work and Caprock Renewables in general.

Raina Hornaday (00:54.402)

Thank you so much for having me. This is one of my favorite podcasts of all time. So I’m really thankful to be a guest today. Keprock Renewables came from very kind of homegrown roots. My family homesteaded in Eastern New Mexico, 1906. And my dad started Keprock Farms in the seventies. His dad and his grandfather farmed dryland wheat farm, milo, things like that on the high plains of Eastern New Mexico.

Raina Hornaday (01:23.434)

starting in 1906 and then until my dad passed away a couple years ago, but he farmed his whole life and was a diehard farmer and loved the land. And he also was the executive director of Eastern Plains Council of Governments. And that gave him the opportunity to put up a small Met Tower on our edge of our farm, which is where the Caprock name comes from. It is the Caprock. There’s lots of Caprocks. It’s not the only Caprock. There’s a town in Texas called Caprock.

Raina Hornaday (01:52.59)

But we had Caprock Farms and ranches. He put up the Met Tower. He and I would go get the chip, mail it to California, and we retained that data. And I took it to the Renewable Energy Roundup, which is a precursor of Clean Text, a TRIA. It was a TRIA event that was held in Fredericksburg, which I loved so much. And I think it was 2001. And met with lots of folks there.

Raina Hornaday (02:20.65)

Rainwater catchment, but renewable developers. And that’s how the Caprock Wind project that is right there between our farm and ranch in Eastern New Mexico was born. So that project lived its life 20 years. It was decommissioned by Leeward Energy and repowered next door with the same substation. So that’s where Caprock Renewables got its name. I founded it 10 years ago and the goal was to do utility skills solar.

Raina Hornaday (02:50.734)

We did 150, 200, and 300 megawatt projects in Texas. And during that time, that was really when the utility scale solar assets were being built out in Texas. And I had done this with wind, so it was really interesting to see how similar it was. But these, as you know, people from all over the world, the biggest companies come to

Raina Hornaday (03:16.332)

do business in renewables in Texas. It’s just the best market. It’s kind of the easiest market, energy only. And so I’m a small developer, boutique shop...

Transmission Takes a Decade, Load Doesn't — with Raina Hornaday