Solar power generation keeping the lights on this summer, expert believes

AUSTIN, Texas - The sun is a star, literally but also figuratively. President of Stoic Energy, Doug Lewin said solar has been producing at high levels during this hot summer, and it is why your air conditioner unit has stayed powered on.

"If we took this heat in last summer, I hate to speak in absolute but it's highly likely we would have had outages," he said.

Solar technology converts energy from the sun into electricity and Texas has been using it a lot lately.

"What you are seeing at peak is eight or nine gigawatts with solar. This time last year we had less than half of that," said Lewin.

Along with that, is wind power generation.

"Wind and solar are like peanut butter and jelly. The sun goes down at night, so solar produces zero overnight. That is usually when it's windiest, especially in west Texas where most of our wind turbines are," said Lewin.

He feels lawmakers will have to get on board with renewable energy, or Texas will be left behind Lewin believes the governor's comments during the 2021  freeze speaks to what his priorities are, and what he thinks caused the tragedy.

"This shows how the green new deal would we a deadly deal for the United States. Our wind and solar got shut down and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid," said Governor Greg Abbott.

"Texas has been an energy leader for generations, and to just willingly give that up because we are not willing to change and evolve as the rest of the world changes, would be a tragedy," said Lewin.

Lewin said power plants are being strained tremendously this summer and does not feel the grid is prepared for the worst.

"Power plants are being strained, they've been asked to run a lot in May and June," he said.

"We had a day, it was a Friday the 13th in May where 3 gigawatts worth of thermal plants went offline in a short amount of time on a day when demand was really high and that nearly put us into rolling outage conditions," said Lewin.

Lewin said on a day like Tuesday, there was a lot of buffer space if a plant or two were to trip offline, but these conditions change day by day. He also says he worries about August and what that will look like for the grid.