Brent Bennett

@TPPF @Life_Powered_ Policy Director
@EnergyRealities Senior Fellow
PhD Materials Science @UTAustin #HookEm
Born and raised Texan for life.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@joshdr83 We need transmission, but we would not need so much so soon if not for the fact that we have spent the past 15 years overbuilding wind and solar. My LinkedIn post explains a little more what's going on. https://t.co/uc9hd92OSR

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@joshdr83 Josh, I'm happy to discuss offline rather than making jokes at serious policy debates on Twitter. Thousands of landowners are about to have their land taken to build lines that we largely could avoid if we were building more gas generation where it was needed.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@joshdr83 As one example: the three western 765-kV lines have a total transfer capacity of about 6 GW. 4-5 GW of new gas in West Texas plus some energy storage would obviate the need for those lines.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@RocCityBuilt @TheFrackingGuy @clawrence Also, most of these large facilities are bringing their own power because they are not counting on the grid for full reliability and because the #txlege required them to curtail during emergencies, which many of them don't want to do. Not a sign of a reliable grid.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@RocCityBuilt @TheFrackingGuy @clawrence FWIW, I think ERCOT's reliability assessment next year is going to support our assessment that the winter problem is far from solved in Texas.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@TheFrackingGuy @forrest_f_ @mitchrolling @rk__upadhya @xiaowang1984 @TermPowerTrader The solution is not a capacity market, which is just customers subsidizing backup power (throw $$$ at the problem). The solution, as @TheFrackingGuy says, is to either require wind and solar to pay for their capacity deficit or pay them a lower energy price to compensate.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@TheFrackingGuy @forrest_f_ @mitchrolling @rk__upadhya @xiaowang1984 @TermPowerTrader The problem is that ERCOT energy market pays the same clearing price to wind and solar and it does to thermal. No treatment of the different capacity and operating characteristics. It's as if we internalized Lazard's LCOE formulas into our market design, with all their flaws.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

@TheFrackingGuy @DavidBakhtiari That's correct @TheFrackingGuy. And term limits make staffers and bureaucrats more powerful than legislators. The support for term limits is well-intentioned, but the empirical evidence is that they do more harm than good. Just look at California.

[Brent Bennett @drbennettTX]

First week of work at the Texas Public Policy Foundation! Ready to make some great things happen. @TPPF #myfirstTweet