On May 22, the Texas House of Representatives gave final approval to Senate Bill 7 which deals with improving energy grid reliability across the state of Texas. Improving grid reliability was named a priority by both Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick for this legislative session. SB 7 was part of the Texas Senate's primary response to grid reliability and was passed out of the upper chamber on April 5.
On March 9, Patrick and Senator Charles Schwertner released a joint statement announcing their support for Senate Bills 6 and 7. These two pieces of legislation are aimed at ensuring a reliable energy grid across Texas and attracting new sources of reliable thermal electricity generation.
The Texas Senate passed SB 7 by a unanimous vote of 31-0 on April 5. The body also passed SB 6 by a vote of 22-9, with 8 Democrats and 1 Republican opposing.
According to the text of SB 7, the legislation helps to "target investment" at dispatchable sources of generation, as well as allocating the cost of unreliability and intermittency to generators who contribute to that unreliability and intermittency.
Brad Johnson, a reporter for The Texan, said that the House passed a committee substitute of SB7, which means that the passed version of the bill has several differences from the original Senate version. Among these differences are that the House version allows intermittent generators to work with battery facilities to provide supplemental power to meet the minimum generation requirements during times of low generation. Additionally, battery facilities are exempted from any performance requirements.
According to the Legislative Reference Library of Texas, due to the fact that the House made changes to the Senate version of SB 7, the Senate must vote on whether to accept those changes. If not, a Conference Committee report is formed, containing members of both the House and Senate. The Committee will then work to reach a compromise between the House and Senate versions of the bill, which is then recirculated to both chambers, who must pass the compromise version in order for the bill to be sent to the Governor.
