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New Energy World™
New Energy World™ embraces the whole energy industry as it connects and converges to address the decarbonisation challenge. It covers progress being made across the industry, from the dynamics under way to reduce emissions in oil and gas, through improvements to the efficiency of energy conversion and use, to cutting-edge initiatives in renewable and low-carbon technologies.
How to avoid future black-outs: UK and Texas grid operators compare and contrast
23/7/2025
10 min read
Feature
To better understand the challenges faced by electricity system operators as renewable energy systems are integrated with grids, a Rice University MBA team including Melissa Stark, Linda Capuano, Nish Shanmugham and Lei Zhu, compared two leading system operators: the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and the UK’s National System Operator (NESO).
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), electricity has grown at twice the rate of overall energy demand over the past decade. This pace of electricity growth could accelerate to as much as six times the rate of overall energy demand in the next decade, driven by rising electricity demand from data centres, air conditioning, and the electrification of transport, industry and heating.
Although there are examples of new large data centres preferring firm generation, current IEA analysis shows that electricity generated from solar and wind is expected to account for much of the supply growth. Even in markets without clean power targets, the favourable economics and short development cycles of wind and solar have led to significant capacity expansion. For example, Texas has the largest installed wind and solar capacity installed in the US (in 2024, approximately 164 TWh of electricity was generated from wind and solar in ERCOT, compared to 62 TWh in California).
Many electricity markets are already capable of managing instantaneous wind and solar penetrations of over 80%, and even up to 100%. This reflects significant progress by electricity system operators, where operators have adapted to manage changes in system inertia and voltage associated with more distributed and variable generation.