Dan Crenshaw wants more nuclear power in Texas, Elon Musk wants bigger batteries

 Washington Examiner:

Since the deep freeze that brought down the Texas energy grid, causing millions of Texans to freeze in the dark, a variety of fixes have been proposed to ensure that such an event never happens again.

For example, Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a Republican, has proposed measures to encourage the building of nuclear power plants. He proposes streamlining the permitting process for new nuclear power plants and allowing the government to cosign loans to finance their construction. He aims to encourage the development of advanced nuclear power technology as well.

Crenshaw makes the point that unlike wind and solar, nuclear operates 24/7: day, night, rain, shine, calm, and windy. Nuclear is therefore more resilient than the renewable energy that many in Washington favor while, at the same time, avoiding greenhouse gasses.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk, a new Texas resident known for his rockets and electric cars, is trying a different approach. He is constructing a giant battery in Brazoria County about 40 miles from Houston. The battery will be capable of storing 100 megawatts of energy, enough to power 20,000 homes. The battery would be charged when electricity costs are low and then could be used when a shortage of energy develops. The same principle applies to home rooftop solar systems in which a battery is charged during the day and provides electricity at night.

Grid-level battery storage units would help Texas’s vaunted wind farms become more resilient. Excess electricity generated by the wind turbines could be stored in the batteries for use later, when the winds are calm or when an event such as a winter storm takes many of them offline. Musk has built similar giant batteries in California and Australia.

Had enough of Musk’s giant batteries existed during the winter apocalypse, they would have taken some of the load, at least temporarily, while technicians feverishly worked to bring the wind farms, gas generators, coal plants, and even the single nuclear power plant that went down back online.

...

I am not opposed to doing both, but I see nuclear as a more long-term solution.  The biggest loser in the Texas deep freeze is the Green New Deal.  It is going to be harder to push that as a dependable solution.