Faced with brutal heat, the Texas Electric Grid has a new ally: solar power

Last month, the Texas Legislature approved a new $10 billion program primarily to boost construction of new natural gas plants. The amount includes $1.8 billion for local hospitals and other critical services to purchase emergency power generators, a facility originally proposed by Mr. Johnson.

Republicans too advanced legislation which would have increased costs and regulations for renewable energy producers, including new fees for transmission and ancillary services and new licensing requirements and rules about where projects can be located.

The legislation failed, but only at the last minute, and not before industry concerns arose.

“It’s hugely ironic,” said John Berger, the CEO of Sunnova Energy, a Houston-based solar and battery home battery company. “The growth in wind and solar power is because Texas is more capitalist than many other states,” he said, “so the response of the so-called capitalists in Austin was socialism — letting the state invest $10 billion” in natural gas.

“It’s blatant protectionism and it’s not what made Texas great,” he added.

Texas still lags behind California in the amount of solar energy on the roofs of homes. But in solar park growth, it has quickly overtaken the Golden State.

Outside of Houston, in Fort Bend County, there are now six major solar parks, up from one in 2020.

“It is being commissioned as we speak,” Joaquin Castillo, the CEO of Acciona Energy North America, said of the new 1,500-acre solar farm in Fort Bend, which will be enabled this summer. “Texas has historically demonstrated a strong commitment to a free market,” Mr. Castillo said. “And it’s a fast-growing market in terms of demand.”

The change has been rapid and striking, especially in rural West Texas, where voters tend to be conservative, mostly in favor of oil and gas development — and increasingly benefiting from the proliferation of solar power.