"The Texas Senate passed a bill Thursday that leading business interests fear would lead to an age of expensive power and rolling blackouts.
If passed by the House, state S.B. 715 would require all renewable projects — even existing ones — to buy backup power, largely from coal or gas plants.
This would require solar plants in particular to buy backup power to “match their output at night — a time when no one expects them to produce energy and when demand is typically at its lowest anyway,” consultant and energy expert Doug Lewin wrote in an April analysis"
The Hill tries to make backup energy as something that brings volatility and rolling blackouts, which makes no sense. Implying they believe that wind and solar should go without backup, and consistent generation at night, which is basically extra capacity. If you are going to need to roll out back up generation in the future, might as well do it now, instead of later. This does a couple of things for the Texas GOP goal of increasing reliability, it increases the responsibility on solar and wind producers to address their own volatility, instead of dumping the volatility on ancillary services, which get less revenue, because of their off-time, accommodating wind and solar. By forcing solar, and wind producers to buy capacity from what would most think as only backup generation, the Legislature wants to force wind, and solar to participate in 24 hour production. A mandate like this makes room for reliable energy rollout, basically more support for natural gas, and presumably batteries, instead of just crowding out the preferred energy types.