Texas Grid Battery Plans
As a sign of how the grid is changing, Octopus Energy USA has introduced PowerStore, a new battery-powered retail electricity plan in the Texas market that allows homeowners to get a 30 kWh battery system installed in their home under a 36-month fixed-rate subscription plan.
The plan, which requires no down payment, offers low-cost electricity of 8 cents per kWh (in addition to utility distribution charges that generally run about 5 to 6 cents per kWh), along with a $45 per month subscription charge for the battery.
This program is similar to other battery-based retail energy plans currently available in Texas, such as those offered by Base Power and Solrite. These plans offer low-cost batteries to homeowners which are then combined and managed as a virtual power plant by the installation firms.
The company acts as a retail provider of power to the grid, charging the batteries when power is cheap and selling it back to the ERCOT grid during peak demand at a substantial profit. In this way the installing company gets access to the grid at the homeowner’s location, creating a large distributed energy system without having to purchase land or negotiate interconnection agreements with the regulators.
The homeowner gets a battery backup system for their home at a fraction of the cost that they would have to pay if they had purchased and installed the system themselves.
While limited to the Texas market at the moment, plans are to expand these offerings nationwide.
Renewable Power Purchase Agreements reach record prices
The average North American solar power purchase agreement price rose 4.7 percent during the first quarter of 2026 and Wind prices rose nearly 8 percent, according to the latest data from the energy marketplace at LevelTen Energy. Solar and wind PPA costs have increased 13 percent and 24 percent, respectively, over the past year. A PPA can be thought of as the wholesale price that utilities or companies pay developers for power.
The current price escalation appears to be primarily driven by rapidly increasing demand for electric generation, according to industry experts. At an average price of $79.40/MWh for wind and $64.49/MWh for solar, PPA prices have reached the highest rates reported since 2018, when LevelTen Energy first began indexing price data.
And these price increases do not factor in the impacts of the war in Iran and the impending expiration of federal incentives for new wind and solar generation, which have yet to play a major role in PPA pricing. Experts predict that the loss of incentives as well and the fossil fuel disruptions from the middle east will force electricity prices even higher.
Ohio rejects more solar and wind projects than any other state
According to new research that examines how regulators in 19 states handle wind and solar project applications, Ohio has had the most projects rejected by state regulators. The research journal Frontiers in Sustainable Energy Policy noted that the Ohio Power Siting Board has rejected seven major projects, with another five withdrawn by developers before a decision was handed down.
The research covered 460 U.S. projects spanning applications filed from 2018 to 2024 for solar and from 2015 to 2021 for wind.
Prior to 2021, The Ohio Power Siting Board had approved every wind and solar project to come before it. But a law passed in 2021, Senate Bill 52, significantly changed the approval process.
The law allowed local officials such as township trustees to designate parts of their jurisdictions as off-limits to utility-scale renewables.
Since that time, the Ohio Power Siting Board has routinely rejected proposed projects if significant local opposition is raised against the projects. This has been the case even when local reporting has found that the supposed opposition was manufactured by fossil fuel interest groups and those submitting comments were found to either not exist or did not live in the region affected by the development.
Solar and wind dominate global power growth
In 2025, solar and wind dominated global energy growth, delivering around six times more new capacity than all other power sources combined and supplying nearly all new electricity generation.
The leading countries for combined per capita solar and wind generation are Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Australia and the Netherlands, at 3-4 Megawatt-hours (MWh) per capita per year.
Australia and the Netherlands lead for per capita solar generation, while Scandinavia and Ireland lead for per capita wind generation. By 2030, Australia's grid is expected to reach 82 percent renewable electricity (mostly from solar and wind).
Global electricity generation from renewables edged past coal in 2025, according to a new analysis by Ember, a clean energy think tank. Globally renewables now account for nearly 34 percent of all electricity generation, followed closely by coal at 33 percent. Natural gas accounts for 24.4 percent of global electricity, with power from nuclear energy a distant fourth at 8.9 percent.
According to the report, solar generation is growing at a rate about 18 times faster than natural gas. For the first time since records have been kept, power generation from fossil fuels actually declined in 2025. There has been essentially zero growth in nuclear power generation over the past 20 years.
In the US, natural gas remains the fuel that powers the largest share of electric generation, with a 40 percent market share. It is followed by renewables at 25 percent, nuclear at 17 percent and coal at 16 percent. In March of this year, for the first time in the history of the modern grid, renewables generated more electricity than natural gas or any other fuel source.