The Texas power grid is being rebuilt in real time. Energy Capital covers the policy fights, market mechanics, and technical decisions shaping what comes next. Hosted by Josh Rhodes (UT Austin) and Matt Boms (TAEBA), with the policymakers, regulators, and researchers at the center of it. Produced by ClarityForge Studios.
Topics include ERCOT market operations, grid reliability, renewable integration, distributed energy resources, interconnection and transmission planning, regulatory economics, energy storage, demand response, and the Texas electricity market. New episodes weekly. on Texas energy and power grid issues, featuring interviews with energy professionals, academics, policymakers, and advocates. Produced by ClarityForge Studios.
Rayburn Electric Cooperative broke ground in June on a 570 MW gas plant in Sherman, backed by a $411 million Texas Energy Fund loan at 3 percent, the fund’s seventh generation loan and first to a cooperative.
Rayburn is also putting batteries in members’ houses. Both run on the same logic: Rayburn generates the power and owns the transmission, so it earns on both. An independent power producer earns on energy alone.
On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Matt Boms talks with Christian Nagel, senior director of power supply and production at Rayburn.
* Home batteries as a transmission asset. Texas allocates transmission costs on four summer peaks, so discharging batteries then cuts Rayburn’s bill, worth more, Nagel says, than the energy.
* Telling real load from speculative. Rayburn screened data centers with its own questionnaire before ERCOT standardized one. Abbott’s audit has since pushed ERCOT’s Batch Zero study past April 2027.
* Plus: the 12CP fight and what comes after gas.
Whether Rayburn is a model or a special case turns on rules the PUCT has not written.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction
01:36 – Wind development and the landowner conversation
06:02 – The video that went viral
08:17 – Using your service to open doors
10:23 – The Atlantic Council years
12:19 – Her graduate research on energy and national security
14:44 – From Annapolis to flying Growlers
19:54 – Grounded, and the move to cryptologic warfare
23:59 – Why veterans run down their own service
30:08 – Advice for veterans trying to get into energy
32:56 – How to plug into Project Vanguard
34:49 – Closing thoughts
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