May 6, 2022 | News
Distributed Solar Can Increase Grid Resilience During Hot Texas Summers
This weekend, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) electrical grid will be stressed. But unlike the historic, atypical Winter Storm last year, this weekend is what many Texans would call, “pretty normal.”
Texans should not have to worry about keeping air conditioners on – ever. Texas should embrace all of its energy resources to include solar that is already behind- the-meter at tens of thousands of homes, ranches and businesses today.
“Distributed” solar helps Texas families and businesses keep their energy bills under control. When energy storage is paired with Texans’ solar, it can help Texas communities and their local grids remain resilient and ready for what comes every May…like extreme heat,” said Texas Solar Energy Society (TXSES) Board Chair, Howard “Scot” Arey.
“Texas solar and energy storage at your home or ranch will keep the lights on no matter what occurs on the Texas grid. Thousands of Texans have this security for their families right now. With innovation and serious Texas support, the combined, aggregated benefits of these solar and storage systems will help communities and counties realize the same benefit,” said Arey.
For more than four decades, Texas Solar Energy Society’s vision has been to educate and inspire every Texan to adopt solar energy as part of an equitable 100% clean energy future.
Apr 25, 2022 | News, Solar News of Note, Txses Impact
At long last!! After a few months of focused work and countless tweaks, we’re delighted to officially announce our remodeled website at www.txses.org.
Our goal for this new and improved TXSES website is to provide a more user-friendly way to learn about who we are, what we do and how you can get involved and make a solar difference in your community.
We improved the navigation to make it easier to find our business members, valuable information resources, learn about our active local chapters, upcoming events and the latest Texas clean energy news. Those lovely images you see on the home page? Those are residential and commercial installations by our Platinum and Gold business members, one of the benefits of those levels. The new site is responsive so it’s easy to navigate on your phone, tablet and desktop.
We’ll be constantly updating the site with relevant, timely information, articles, blogs, newsletters, company announcements and member successes in the News section.
Huge thanks to Stephen Bartoleomeo (stevebart9@gmail.com) for his relentless patience and exemplary technical support to get the new site up and running. We couldn’t have done it without him.
Questions? Comments? Let us hear from you! pparsons@txses.org
Mar 14, 2022 | News
Schedule: Part-time
Salary range: Commensurate with experience
Position: reports to Executive Director and Board Chair
Location: Flexible; Texas-based preferred
For more than four decades, TXSES has been the pre-eminent statewide organization developing free thought-leading, independent, fact-based educational materials that inspire innovation, share best practices and educate decision-makers on the critical importance of sound, favorable solar policies that will grow the industry; protect clean air; build healthy, resilient communities; support local, well-paying jobs; and lay the foundation for building a strong solar foundation for a 100% clean energy future for Texas, one community at a time.
Operating virtually, TXSES is a membership-based not-for-profit 501(c)(3) organization. Our unique niche is exemplified in our well-established local chapters in Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Houston and San Antonio. Having boots on the ground in these major metropolitan cities, which represent nearly a quarter of Texas’s 29 million citizens, enables our gifted, dedicated experts to disseminate fact-based, relevant solar information.
TXSES is proud to be an equal opportunity employer committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace and embracing a workplace with diverse voices and perspectives. Applicants shall not be discriminated against because of race, religion, sex, national origin, ethnicity, age, disability, political affiliation, sexual orientation, gender identity, color, marital status or medical conditions.
ABOUT THE POSITION
TXSES is seeking an experienced, self-motivated, and innovative development expert to provide strategic direction and oversight of the organization’s development operations, including prospect research, corporate and foundation relations, government grants, annual giving, donor, funder and membership stewardship and grant reporting tracking. Reporting to TXSES’s Executive Director, the Director of Development will strengthen and expand TXSES’s fundraising program, which establishes and maintains mutually beneficial relationships with foundation, government and corporate partners and individual donors. The Director will develop and implement fundraising strategies to support our mission and revenue goals, guided by established metrics. This is a part-time position and is a new staff role in the organization.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Must embrace the mission of TXSES
- BA or BS from a regionally-accredited institution
- Minimum of five-seven years of progressively responsible development experience, including demonstrated expertise in corporate, foundation and major gift fundraising
- Direct experience soliciting funds from individuals, corporations, government and foundations
- Proposal writing proficiency, including budget development
- Demonstrated passion to mitigate the climate crisis and be part of the clean energy future
- Excellent interpersonal communication skills, including discretion and good judgement
- Excellent oral and written communication skills
- Ability to operate independently in a virtual environment and provide needed self-direction
- Demonstrated ability to prioritize, be flexible and work in a collaborative environment
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
- Degree in nonprofit management, philanthropy/development, or public administration from a regionally-accredited institution
- Current Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) certification
- Additional training in the field, such as grant writing, prospect research, foundation and corporate giving, government grants
- Knowledge of clean energy sector(s) such as solar, energy storage, electric vehicles, wind, energy efficiency, etc. considered a plus
RESPONSIBILITIES
- Strategic oversight
- Contribute to goals and tactics in support of TXSES’s Strategic Plan
- Develop and implement the annual development plan
- Coordinate efforts to identify, cultivate, solicit and steward individual, corporate, government and foundation prospects and funders, with the goal of increasing revenue in accordance with the development plan
- Work with Executive Director to develop cases for support for proposals and interactions with potential donors and funders
- Oversee grant seeking, including researching new opportunities, proposal writing, fundraising database and tracking systems
- Manage donor and funder relations and stewardship
- Make direct funding appeals/asks
- Assist with fundraising special events
TO APPLY
Submit the following materials to pparsons@txses.org with the subject line “Director of Development” no later than February 1, 2022 by 5:00 PM Central:
- Cover letter
- Resumé, including information on major gifts/grants secured
- Contact information for professional references
- Example of annual or other fundraising plan(s) you have developed
- Sample of a proposal and/or case for support language you authored
Nov 10, 2021 | News
Source: Environment Texas
November 6, 2021
The U.S. House of Representatives voted 228-206 last night to build a bridge to a brighter future by passing the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act on Friday. This major bipartisan package will improve Texas’ transportation and power infrastructure and ensure clean water over the coming decades.
Up next: a budget reconciliation bill that would help the U.S. stall climate change and clean up our environment. The Build Back Better Act includes clean energy tax incentives and other investments to tackle pollution.
Key environmental provisions with funding include: removing lead pipes; building EV charging stations; upgrading Texas’s ailing electric grid and power infrastructure; and upgrades to public transportation systems.
Read the press release in its entirety.
Nov 5, 2021 | News
The affairs of TXSES are governed by a Board of Directors chosen from its membership. If you are a current member of TXSES or become a member prior to the election, you are eligible to run for the Board and help guide organizational policy to advance our mission:
Equitable access to solar energy for every Texan.
For more than four decades, TXSES has been the pre-eminent statewide organization that develops free thought-leading, independent, fact-based educational materials that inspire innovation, share best practices and educate decision-makers on the critical importance of sound, favorable solar policies that will grow the industry; protect clean air; build healthy, resilient communities; support local, well-paying jobs; and lay the foundation for building a strong solar foundation for a 100% clean energy future for Texas, one community at a time.
New board members will serve two-year terms beginning January 2022. Four at-large board seats are up for election on the December 2021 ballot. More election information and instructions to submit your application can be found here.
To confirm TXSES membership status, contact Pete Parsons, pparsons@txses.net.
The submission deadline for candidates is November 30, 2021. The election will occur during the month of December. Email questions to TXSESelections@gmail.com.
On a personal note, I have found serving on the Board to be an enjoyable and rewarding experience. If you have a passion for renewable energy and want to make a difference in these challenging times, please consider running.
Amy Olsen | Vice-Chair TXSES Board of Directors
Sep 24, 2021 | News
Karl Rábago
Rábago Energy LLC
For nearly two years now, a coalition of clean energy developers, advocates, and experts from across the U.S. has been working to develop a better understanding of how to build the least-cost, most reliable grid possible. The outcome of this work by the Local Solar for All (“LS4A”) coalition (localsolarforall.org) documents the exciting and money-saving potential that better models and analysis reveals is available from aggressive growth in the distributed solar and storage markets.
The LS4A team joined forces with Vibrant Clean Energy, a modeling firm based in Boulder, Colorado to use a new utility planning model called WIS:dom-P (“Weather-Informed energy Systems: for design, operations and markets”) to break through the limits of old-style utility models and, for the first time, understand the role that solar + storage distributed resources can play in decarbonizing our economy in an affordable and sustainable way.
The WIS:dom-P model was built to thrive in big data in a way that the old models simply can’t handle. With 10,000 times more data points and a resolution down to five minutes, three square kilometers, and one kilowatt, the model can identify the right resource in the right place at the right time to serve demand for electricity most economically. Not only can the model evaluate both large and small resources (below the 69 kV grid level), it also evaluates each kind of supply along with the cost to transmit and distribute it. Solving for electricity demand from a systems perspective reveals new savings opportunities across 80% of the hours in the year.
These amazing benefits arise for several reasons—some expected and some delightfully surprising. Because distributed solar and storage match better with load, these right-sized resources reduce over-building of expensive generation. The WIS:dom-P model can also identify when more expensive local resources are actually a better deal than cheaper resources when accounting for transmission and distribution costs. Even more amazing, the model shows how distributed resources actually reshape the system load that the utility system must serve, getting higher value and more savings out of the large-scale resources, especially wind and solar, as well.
The LS4A team launched its campaign with a study of the lower 48 U.S. states and learned that by optimizing and coordinating distributed solar and storage in utility system planning, the U.S. could eliminate 95% of the carbon emissions from the electric system and save nearly $500 billion in total system costs compared to a business-as-usual approach. The least-cost system has 247,000 MW of distributed solar by the year 2050 and relies on more than 9,000 GWh of utility and distributed storage, about evenly split, by the same date. A distributed solar and storage future also includes two million more jobs than the business-as-usual approach.
The LS4A coalition is planning even more analysis, including evaluation of proposals under discussion at the federal level. And since releasing the first national study, the team has studied the grids in Illinois, California, and New York and added evaluation of economy-wide electrification and impacts on environmentally and economically disadvantaged communities. Every study shows that the savings and other benefits only grow with these strategies. The future is clearly going to be much more distributed—with solar and storage—if we want an affordable, low-carbon energy economy.
Karl’s career spans more than 30 years in clean energy, electricity regulation, sustainability and advocacy. Experienced as a public utility commissioner, he’s also been a federal R&D executive, utility executive, advocate, and attorney.
