Solar Power Keeps Insisting Upon Itself, Red State Or Blue

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As if the voting public needs any more evidence that the entire federal government made a wrong into a dumpster last year, consider the case of solar power. Solar is the quickest and most economical way to get more kilowatts into the hands of energy-thirsty ratepayers, and yet the Trump administration treats the US solar industry like some California-style loony leftist plot to take away our freedoms. After all, solar is booming in sunny blue California…oh wait…and ruby red Texas, too…

Solar Power Rises In Texas

Texas has been dominated by Republican office holders for a generation, but the state also took up the renewable energy banner in 2005 when lawmakers approved a new transmission line that sparked a wind power explosion of epic proportions (see more Texas wind background here).

The spicy red rhetoric favored by Texas office holders suggests that such a game-changing project will not materialize while they are in office. Nevertheless, Texas has also emerged as an epicenter of solar industry activity, running neck and neck with California and Florida.

The big question is whether or not ratepayers are benefiting from an electricity market saturated with solar power, and the US trade organization Solar Energy Industries Association is among those saying yes.

In a new reported issued this morning, SEIA compared electricity costs in California and Texas. They found the same story regardless of partisan politics. Wholesale electricity prices drop when solar rises.

How Low Can Solar Go?

As a caveat, SEIA notes that many factors create upward pressure on retail electricity rates, including new transmission lines and other infrastructure. As a side note, Trump’s extraordinary measures to keep outdated coal power plants up and running has also pushed power generation costs up in some areas.

Still, the new report makes the case that federal policy makers can help keep electricity rates down by supporting policies that shunt more solar power into the grid.

“Rapid growth in solar and energy storage helped drive down average wholesale electricity prices by 42% in Texas and 51% in California from summer 2021 to summer 2026,” SEIA summarized in a press statement earlier today.

“Over the same five-year period, solar generation increased 421% in Texas and 90% in California, while battery storage capacity grew more than 26-fold in Texas and nearly sevenfold in California,” SEIA elaborated, drawing attention to the key role of energy storage technology in the growth of solar power.

In the statement, SEIA also put a dollar figure on the money saved by ratepayers during last summer’s heat waves, compared to five years ago. “From June through August 2026, solar and storage saved Texans approximately $3.55 billion and Californians approximately $2.5 billion compared with the same period in 2021,” SEIA calculated.

Rising Demand, Falling Costs

SEIA also notes that the drop in wholesale costs took place during a period of increased demand. All else being equal, rising demand generally puts upward pressure on prices, particularly if supply is flat. However, in recent years solar and storage have added more new generating capacity to the grid, far outpacing any other available resource. Wind power comes in second for new capacity additions, with natural gas, nuclear, and of course, coal barely registering on the dial. Other renewables — namely, biomass, hydropower, and geothermal also lag far behind despite being embraced by Trump’s “American Energy Dominance” policy.

According to SEIA, demand rose 2.5% in California and 30% in Texas during the study period, but the average wholesale price fell from $77.54 per megawatt-hour to $38.32 in California, and it fell from $54.97 to $31.77 in Texas, concurrent with the increasing presence of solar power on the grid.

“From summer 2021 to summer 2026, residential generation costs fell 4% in Texas and 10% in California,” SEIA emphasized.

In today’s report, SEIA also suggests that a revved-up solar industry can help offset other costs that push retail rates up. “Solar and storage growth has helped put downward pressure on energy prices despite transmission and distribution costs driving up overall residential electricity bills by 3% in Texas and 22% in California over the same time period,” SEIA concluded.

Don’t just take their word for it. The results are consistent with new research from the MIT Sloan School of Management. In a report earlier this year, the researchers tracked 25 years of electricity rates and and utility costs. They found that utility-scale wind and solar power projects benefit ratepayers with lower costs.

Pushing Back Against The Renewable Energy Pushback

The MIT report was aimed at investigating claims that state-based renewable energy mandates (aka RPS or Renewable Portfolio Standards) have been pushing rates up.

“State Renewable Portfolio Standards mandates have zero impact on residential energy prices, utility-scale renewables are actually associated with lower retail rates,” the team summarized in a press release last March. So much for that.

““We find that RPS mandates have virtually zero impact on prices, and utility-scale renewables are actually associated with lower retail rates,” explained Christopher Knittel, the Associate Dean for Climate and Sustainability at MIT Sloan, among other titles.

“While RPSs have often been blamed for higher prices due to the cost of compliance, the researchers’ analysis tells a different story,” MIT Sloan emphasized.

“Energy generated by large-scale solar plants, for example, comes with lower transmission, distribution, and maintenance costs for utilities, and these efficiencies can be passed on to the consumer,” Knittel added for good measure.

Solar Power And The Missing Link

If you caught that thing about “can be” passed on to the consumer, that’s a reference to another finding by the same study. While utility-scale solar power plants can reduce grid infrastructure costs, rooftop solar can raise them.

As MIT explains, rooftop solar requires distribution networks to do something they were not designed to do. Historically, electricity has always flowed from power plants to ratepayers. Rooftop solar requires the grid to handle backflow, too.

The MIT team found that this bidirectional flow is attended by a significant increase in operations and maintenance costs. “Utilities must spend more to manage the technical complexity of harmonizing thousands of decentralized generators with an aging grid,” the Sloan team explains.

Under a worst case scenario, property owners with rooftop solar reap all the benefits of their personal solar power plants, while forcing grid costs onto other ratepayers.

That doesn’t have to be, of course. The MIT team cites the example of New Hampshire, which has has adjusted its fixed rate to recover costs among all ratepayers.

The report advises a three-part approach to leveling the playing field, which includes accelerating utility-scale wind and solar power projects, implementing efficiency improvements in distribution grids, and adjusting utility rates to ensure equity among all ratepayers.

Image: Solar power has helped keep wholesale electricity rates down in Texas and California over the past five years, regardless of partisan politics and heat waves, too (Texas graph courtesy of US EIA via SEIA).