As if the voting public needs any more evidence that the entire federal government made a wrong into a dumpster last year, consider the case of solar power. Solar is the quickest and most economical way to get more kilowatts into the hands of energy-thirsty ratepayers, and yet the Trump administration treats the US solar industry like some California-style loony leftist plot to take away our freedoms. After all, solar is booming in sunny blue California…oh wait…and ruby red Texas, too…

Texas has been dominated by Republican office holders for a generation, but the state also took up the renewable energy banner in 2005 when lawmakers approved a new transmission line that sparked a wind power explosion of epic proportions (see more Texas wind background here).

The spicy red rhetoric favored by Texas office holders suggests that such a game-changing project will not materialize while they are in office. Nevertheless, Texas has also emerged as an epicenter of solar industry activity, running neck and neck with California and Florida.

The big question is whether or not ratepayers are benefiting from an electricity market saturated with solar power, and the US trade organization Solar Energy Industries Association is among those saying yes.

In a new reported issued this morning, SEIA compared electricity costs in California and Texas. They found the same story regardless of partisan politics. Wholesale electricity prices drop when solar rises.

As a caveat, SEIA notes that many factors create upward pressure on retail electricity rates, including new transmission lines and other infrastructure.

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