title: Is Texas Ready for Winter Now? (with Will McAdams)
author: Energy Capital Podcast
contenttype: podcast
publication: Energy Capital Podcast
published: 2026-01-21T19:42:34
sourceurl: https://api.substack.com/feed/podcast/185322221/4eb826b7e9a0cb97485a5f08c4a9bc20.mp3
word_count: 6506
Hi, everyone. I'm really excited to welcome Will McAdams to the podcast today. This is a really exciting chapter in our state's energy history. And I am very excited to be joined by an amazing guest today. So thank you so much, Will, for joining. What a privilege. All right. Will is a former commissioner at the Public Utility Commission of Texas. One of the architects of Texas' modern grid reforms after Winterstorm Yuri at the PUC will help to establish some of the most stringent power plant weatherization standards in the country. He also led the creation of the ADER pilot program, the first program in the US to allow virtual power plants to provide reliability services to a major grid. Will also represent in Texas at the Southwest Powerpool, shaped regional energy reliability policy. And he also served in senior roles in the Texas legislature. Will is also an Army veteran. And I want to thank him for his service on the podcast here. And really, just for your leadership, Will in the state of Texas. And just to say thank you on all of us who work in the industry because we are all following your footsteps. And just thank you for playing such a pivotal role in our energy policy. Glad I could help, Matt. Thanks. So I wanted you to take us back in time here. You stepped into a role in probably the most traumatic grid event in Texas history. We're coming up on the five-year anniversary of Winterstorm Yuri. So you could just reflect on that. And what was going through your mind in the first few weeks when you were appointed commissioner? Yeah, the first thing I had to do was try to figure out what happened. And you know, there was information for public consumption. And then there was information that we needed just to figure out the mechanics of the disaster, the crisis, how it unfolded the sequence, how one step led to another that resulted in such deep and long-lasting outages, which resulted in loss of life and property damage and just devastating economic effects for the state. And we did that. So that first week was just a series of calling in, you know, former colleagues, friends that I knew in the industry and just asking them point blank in front of a dry erase board, what happened? And at some brutally honest answers, a lot of it was very fresh for them. A lot of them were picking up the pieces of businesses to facilities that were damaged by the crisis, power generators that were wrecked. We really had to rebuild the system, rebuild how the system operated together and take a look at how to hold people accountable and how to check that this never happens again. Yeah. And obviously we've got a lot of folks now asking questions at the five year anniversary of how are we better prepared now than we were five years ago? And I can't think of a better person to ask that question too. Yeah, actually, I was speaking with a new commissioner not that long ago. And they asked me if I thought we were ready. And I said point blank. Absolutely. And the reason I said that is because in my experience in that first week, asking those questions, how did this happen? What happened? You got to remember how the event transpired. We had 14 days of weather forecasts that showed that as that storm crossed the Great Plains, it was building power, speed, force, temperatures continued to drop. As it moved into Texas, it brought freezing rain. And we lost four gigawatts of power generation in less than 30 minutes, which is unheard of. That caused frequency variations and volatility on the system that ended up tripping up other essential generation as they were trying to arrest the frequency freefall of the system. And then that led to deep load shed situations where power was curtailed to the entire energy system, the natural gas system that was moving gas molecules along the pipelines to power generation of the plants. And when those molecules stopped, when the power was cut off, they froze in place. And that led to even longer lasting blackouts. And we didn't come out of it for another four days. So it was a series of dominoes that ended up falling. And I want to point out because of that frequency anomaly, because the stability of the system was the first trigger that began leading to the cascading outages. We only had one gigawatt of batteries on the system at that time. One gigawatt to 1.5 gigawatts. If we had had the batteries that we have today, then there would have been no frequency volatility on the system, because those batteries would have instantaneously reacted. They would have arrested the frequency freefall, stabilized the system, allowed the gas fleet to catch up. And we may not have had any outages at that time. I mean, we don't know. It's really, you know, Monday morning, quarterbacking five years later. But that was a critical capability that we did not have. And so today, instead of one gigawatt of batteries, we have 15 gigawatts of batteries, 11 to 15, many that are in development that will be energized in the next three months before summer. And then, as you stated, we imposed the most conservative and stringent weatherization requirements of the entire United States in the aftermath of that. And we imposed an ambient weather temperature standard on our entire generation fleet, where if you're in the panhandle of Texas, you have to weatherize your power plant to a minus 17 degree standard. That necessitates you wrapping pipes. That necessitates you putting up wind shielding. That necessitates you putting in space eaters and making sure that intake valves or steam vents don't freeze up. You're going to have to take steps and you're going to have to have people there before these weather events to maintain them throughout the event. And our generators have done that. And not only that, but ERCOT has hired hundreds of inspectors that go out every season to inspect to those standards. And if those generators don't meet those standards, there's fines that start to apply. And the PUC can find them up to a million dollars per day per incident where they're out of compliance. That's in the statute. So our power generators take us very seriously. The PUC takes it very seriously. And ERCOT takes it deadly seriously. So you won't have the catastrophic cascade of events like we had near that sequence is disrupted. Now it's not to say we're not going to have outages in the future. We've got a lot of load growth. We've got a lot of new industrial development in Texas. The economy's blooming. It's growing. And the grid hasn't caught up to that. And it's going to take years for that to catch up. So you're going to you may have temporary disruptions, but you will not have the long lasting outages like we saw in 2021. Yeah. And so you hinted at this and we're entering this new chapter in Texas energy. And it's I think no one knows exactly where this chapter is headed. We have an idea of how much load is coming online over the next few years. Looking at the interconnection queue about 2000 projects adding up to 435 gigawatts, which is more than five times the peak demand that we have today. And so the question I want to ask you is, are we entering the most consequential decade in Texas grid history? Are these decisions going to define what our grid looks like here moving forward? Look, I advise everybody not to let the magnitude of the moment just cloud their perspective of history. We've seen this before. Load growth after World War II and air conditioners started becoming ubiquitous. It was pretty extreme. And Wall Street Journal has published graphs of basically the big spike in the 1950s and 60s after the home builders started building out all the ranch style homes for all the GIs coming back settling in the middle class boomed. And that drove large scale energy consumption growth for almost three decades, two and a half decades, the 1950s and 60s leading into 1970s. That's why all the nuclear power plants were built during the 70s to satisfy all that load growth. But then globalization happened, industries moved overseas. We're just coming off of 25 years of negligible load growth compared to that historic comparison. And that's why we think this is unprecedented. But we've seen this before. And we innovated our way out of it. We grew our way out of it. And that's what we're going to do again. And that's why you see the PUC policymakers state legislature and basically businesses of all shapes and sizes collaborating to become innovative and how do we incrementally allow energy consumers to receive grid service over the next five years. And in you throughout very large numbers, you know, the amount of energy consumers that we have in queue that want to receive grid service, they are not all going to be served in the next five years. There's not enough capacity of either delivery capacity like the wires capacity outside of your homes and pounds or the high line capacity to move power over great distances to serve that need at the moment. So we're going to have to build that. And that's going to take time. And there's not enough supply right now. So there's not enough power generation units in the state to serve that amount of supply. So that's going to take some time. Everybody's going to have to be patient. And frankly, we need to be creative about old systems that we hadn't, you know, looked at for efficiencies for 50 years. We're going to need to reevaluate that and see if new technology can be brought to bear to more efficiently utilize existing systems in the intervening years. The grid that we have versus the grid that we will have. Yeah. Well, I think on that point, we'll take us through some of the load growth that's coming because the one you hear most about is certainly data centers and AI. What you don't hear as much about would be on the industrial side on folks moving to Texas from other places. There's a lot of other key factors here that are driving load growth in Texas, not to mention our booming economy. So the question I have is you have some really creative solutions for how you can meet that low moving forward. And if you can touch on how you can limit costs to ratepayers, I think that's going to be a really important piece of this, right? It's like the pie is expanding for everyone. How do you keep the rates low for millions of Texans who ultimately have to pay their electric bills at the end of every month? Yeah, everybody. And I was really sensitive to this when I was at the PC, but all former commissioners are sensitive to affordability of power. And look, there's two parts of the electricity bill. If you're a Texan, there's the energy and then there's the delivery charge that it takes to move the power to you. Okay? The energy is by definition deregulated. That's basically going to be a combination of whatever the fuel cost is, you know, whatever gas you're burning to make the electricity to power your home or renewable energy, which is zero marginal cost and it's based on the market wherever it settles. That's what you pay. The delivery charge is regulated. Okay? So that's based on how we're much that big power line cost over 30 years. You divide that up by 30 and you give a return on the investment to the utility to manage it. And that's what you see in the delivery charge on your utility bill. And, you know, that number stayed relatively constant with little blips over 25 years. But now we're in a growth cycle, so we need new infrastructure. So the delivery charge is actually going to start to incrementally go up on people's bill. Traditionally, over the last 25 years, when we didn't have big industries, moving into Texas other than oil and gas, which is traditional industries, the big energy consuming industries. Basically, our load growth consisted of air conditioner based load growth of normal people living in their homes, turning on the AC at four o'clock in the afternoon in August. And they would get charged a lot of money for doing that because the energy is expensive and the delivery charges were applied. And there wasn't a lot of other industries to spread the cost over. So there wasn't a lot of other businesses to socialize the cost that average Texans were paying for because the average Texans were driving the neat case for the new infrastructure. That's how costs are assigned. So here's where this moment is an opportunity for Texas. For the first time in a long time, we've got some big businesses moving in that are starting to put in some major pieces of investment. And they're going to consume a lot of energy. And every electron that they consume, they're going to pay a delivery charge on. And because they're consuming more, they're going to socialize the cost of all the infrastructure that's coming in across a broader base of ratepayers. All right. Because of that, that should incrementally reduce the need for residential ratepayers to pay more of that regulated cost. It actually should bring down electric rates over time. But here's the trick. You have to synchronize the grid of today. And as they're building out, you have to continue to allow those large industrial consumers to incrementally keep interconnecting and receiving grid service so that they can pay their regulated delivery charges and take the burden off of the residential consumer. And so there's attention there because you still need to safely integrate those large loads. So you don't want there to be a lag in the big new transmission lines being built and those costs being imposed on people and new loads coming in to help pay for it. And so that's the situation we find ourselves in. We've never had loads of this size requesting grid service. When you have a facility that consumes as much power at a single point of interconnection, a single point of grid service, that's the same level of consumption as the greater loss Angeles area in California. That is something we've never seen before. And we are technically trying to figure out how to manage safely manage that grid service to that consumer. And that's something that our scientists, our industry, our researchers are all trying to figure out right now. So that's why we in these intervening years in order to keep consumers under cost down. We need as many innovative solutions as possible to support grid resiliency, to support grid reliability, to allow consumers to take themselves off the grid if they want to. That means solar panels on houses, batteries on the back of houses, put that both systems on businesses, allow them to take tax deductions, allow them to invest in the grid and then create mechanisms like we did with the ADR pilot where they can participate in the market and help align their interests with the reliability and affordability of the system. And then hopefully if enough of that starts to happen and allow technology to manage that if enough of that starts to happen, that starts reducing costs in and around the concentration of those consumers for everyone else because they're producing, storing and discharging power when those people in and around that system most need it. And that's the beauty of the sophisticated grid that we built. There's an opportunity, it requires our regulators and our grid operators to be innovative. And I know that's a hard ask because they want to retreat to the means of providing power that they've known for the last hundred years. But we do have brilliant new technologies coming into the system. We do see how these are being employed in other areas of the world. And it is supporting reliability and affordability. So we have test cases that we can follow. And frankly, Texas has always been a leader in these approaches and we need to continue that tradition. That's great. Well, and I was going to ask you about the ADR program specifically. So I'm happy you brought this up. You played a really important role at the commission in spearheading the pilot program. It has grown to, I believe, seven aggregated DER pilots that are currently running over at ERCOT. And it feels like we're at a pivotal moment now where it should be moving from the pilot phase to becoming just a fixture in normal ERCOT operations. What do you see as the next logical step? I mean, there were the discussions over telemetry, interoperability, all the technical hurdles. And it feels like we're at a point now where most of those hurdles have been cleared. But is there some more unlocking that needs to be done as far as the real economic value of these distributed resources? Yeah. I mean, especially now where you have these large industrial consumers coming in, that's going to impact prices on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis on a very granular basis. All right. And our market system in Texas is hyper sophisticated in that it receives price signals based on the substation that's outside of your neighborhood, okay? That's very locationally driven. The ADR pilot was never able to receive what we call locational marginal prices, which is that nodal price at the substation that's outside of your neighborhood. And the reason was is because it's based on aggregations. So you have a could have a concentration of homes in disparate areas within a certain geographic territory. So it takes center point. Center point covers what we call Houston's own. It's the city Houston, 3.3 million people, actually closer to four now. Most of the Houston ship channel, all that industrial activity, it's the economic engine of the state. They only get a price point that settled on a regional basis. And that dilutes the overall value for anybody wanting to participate in the program. But if someone living in Pasadena, okay, right there on the ship channel, right there next to Exxon and Chevron's industrial plants, those industrial consumers consume a lot of energy and the the nodal price at that substation is really high because they're consuming a lot of energy and they need a lot of energy. So if someone was able to put solar panels in a battery, in the Pasadena area next to the substation, next to the Chevron and Exxon refinery and produce more power, generate more power than they ultimately consume. If we had prices that were set just like we do on the regular market at that substation, that household would be able to make a lot of money. And that would demonstrate value for them and that would demonstrate value for any of their neighbors who want to do the same thing. And then you have like a replicative effect across entire neighborhoods, cities, regions. And that is the system we need. And as these new loads come in that are so big, if they should trip off line, if we have a system of batteries at every household or at every business that could help absorb the shock and help restabilize the system, those business owners and Texans are assisting in resiliency and reliability, which is the spirit of how the market's supposed to work. That's the competitive market that we have in Texas and that works so well. A real world experience. Yeah. So what's stopping us from getting there? Like it feels like you can go down the list of categories that were number one in fill in the blank, number one in everything. But on distributed resources, it does feel like there's more work to be done. It does feel like we could be setting the standard for the entire country. What is it going to take to get there? Technology. Burkut has been testing, expanding and conducting exercises with new technology to see how safely they can settle aggregations of energy dispatch on these very small levels in these distribution levels to see if they can actually safely dispatch energy on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis on an area by area basis so that they can actually apply those values on a nodal basis for the ADR. If they can, this opens up the entire distribution system for resource development. This would allow gas stations, warehouse owners and operators, apartment building complexes, residences of apartment buildings or cooperatives to experience the value off the energy system and tie the realization of that value to reliability, resiliency and energy security of the system. That co-optimizes and aligns everyone's interests. And I think we're right there. It is my hope in the next six months to 12 months. Burkut is able to employ this technology and implement that. Yeah, that's really exciting. And I think it would set an example in a strong signal to the rest of the country because it shows that the free market, the competitive market works really well right when there's an equal playing field and when customers have their resources set up, they're able to generate their own energy. Essentially, they should be rewarded or compensated for that accordingly. So that's, I think we're moving, we're getting there. It's going to take some time, but I think you deserve a lot of credit for the ADR pilot program has come a long way since 22 when it was first launched. I think we're going to need this. Like I said, the numbers are just getting bigger at single points of interconnection on what energy needs look like and are supposed to look like. That means we need to fully utilize every resource that we have at both the transmission level and the distribution level. We can't leave any tools on the table now. Yeah, I think that's right. And the next logical question for you there would be does the same principle apply to residential demand response or whether you have a smart thermostat, you're able to pump up your thermostat a couple of degrees on a hot day in August. Should those customers also be getting some compensation if they're able to have some more flexible demand than what we've seen traditionally? Absolutely. So here's going to be the system that we see in the next two to five years. All right. The system used to be, it would be down 90% of the day, you'd have a system that basically ran at 30% of your installed capacity. It consumers were consuming 70% less than they normally would because during the morning hours, it's cooler or in the winter, the afternoon hours or warmer, your heating system or your cooling system would have to run less. But then as the sun rose and it got hotter or colder depending on the season, all those appliances would crank up and they'd move up and the system would be very picky. Now with these consumers who consume all hours of the day, okay, the system is going to run much more efficiently. Those generation resources are going to try to produce power much more consistently, 70% of the time. But the peaks are still going to be there because AC load is going to fill in right on top of that. So that's going to present a value proposition for anybody wanting to participate in the energy market. And that's where aggregations and most especially demand response are going to serve a vital purpose. It will allow us to shave off those peaks at the most critical time. So that the impact of air conditioning load or heating load isn't so acute on the system. And grid managers can more accurately prepare for how those demand response systems are going to engage and assist the system through those tight moments. So they should experience value. The systems are already in place for them to be able to do that at ERCOT. But like the ADER, they just haven't been allowed to settle on the most valuable points within the market. Once that is completed, we're going to have a lot more capabilities. And average residential consumers should be able to be part of the value proposition of the system unlike today. Yeah, it's really exciting because what I hear you saying is customer empowerment and handing the keys over to the customer and saying, look, if you're able to make your demand more flexible during these key hours, then you'll be rewarded accordingly. If you're able to have a battery in your garage or a backup generator, whatever it might be, they also will be rewarded, right? So the key thing between all of the capabilities, Matt, is why was it different a year ago for energy efficiency versus where it's going next year? What I would say to that is technology. What makes this more dependable for ERCOT to count on today? There was the threat in the past when you said residential demand response that a consumer would override a thermometer that had been adjusted to take demand off the system. Technology is available now to manage that consumption over not just that consumers home, but across tens of thousands of consumers homes so that whatever is provided to the utility and ERCOT for ERCOT to be able to count on, they will build in a margin to where they know they are going to hit their number. And ERCOT can actually plan for that load to be reduced. That will negate the need for future transmission potentially, distribution, infrastructure, saving costs for every one of the ratepayers along that system. Yeah, we just did a study on the value of DERs in ERCOT and it came out to about $1,850 per customer over the next 10 years in saving. So there's a lot of money on the table, potentially, if you're able to unlock that value and give customers, you know, Texas don't get enough credit, I think because they're extremely savvy energy customers compared to the rest of the country. We've got a competitive market where they already have an existing relationship with the retail provider. And I think that what you're saying is the retail providers are going to have to innovate, right? The free market forces them to innovate. That competition is good ultimately for the customer. Well, so the system we've set up is, after Yuri, people didn't want to have to be savvy, you know, about the energy market. They didn't like you. The energy market had harmed them because of that catastrophic sequence of outcomes that I described earlier. But the beauty of our system is they actually don't have to be that savvy. We have entire industry set up to empower the consumer to share value with them as long as they will empower that industry to act on their behalf. And that's where you have retail electric providers. That's where you have municipal utilities or cooperatives that can innovate as well, that participate in the market on their behalf. They take on the risk, shielding the consumer from the risk in exchange for the consumer allowing them to use their capabilities on an aggregated basis to engage in that market. And that's again, like I said, it's the alignment of interest. And so that retail electric provider has an interest in taking power needs off the system so that they can pay less for the next incremental value of energy. And they're well incentivized to do that. And they buy and sell and trade power all day long, every day 365 days a year. And it helps manage their exposure to the risks of the market. And that's just business. Yeah. Yeah. Well said, Will. Well, you mentioned batteries earlier, and that being one of the main differences in our grid, if you compare, you know, what it looks like today to five years ago. And I mentioned that the queue, there's about 160 gigs of solar, 174 gigs of battery storage, about 53 gigs of natural gas. All of the queue is rising. But what does it say that storage is now the largest, the single largest category when it comes to the interconnection queue? I think it's great. One, I was in a debate with the independent market monitor. Oh, gosh, I guess it was 10 years ago now, a long time ago. And I said, why are all these batteries coming in? She said, because that's what the market is telling is telling the system is needed. And the reason is is because we have very granular pricing. If something bad happens to anyone, like if a load trips offline or if a generator trips offline outside of a substation, we want that substation to screen loud and clear that something is needed at that location. And that sets a value. The price either goes sky high or the price goes right bottom. Batteries are the Swiss Army knife of utility tools. All right. They can be located outside of every substation. They can be located anywhere. They can be as big or small as you want. And that battery either absorbs power or it discharges power. And so in effect, what it is, it acts as like a shock absorber to the system. It acts as a shock absorber on price. It also acts as a shock absorber on physical stability. And so if something bad happens, that battery can buy you time. The more batteries we have across our system, in every disparate location through Texas, they will actually solve for volatility. And consumers don't like volatility. And that's a good thing for Texans. So a lot of grids have criticized Texas that we love volatility. We feed off volatility. We've created a system that at its core is volatile, but it attracts innovative solutions to help solve for volatility. And I know that may not make sense. But think about it. It does. And the cure for high prices are high prices. And batteries follow that. So since 2021, matter of fact, since 2022, and we really crossed a real demarcation line on batteries, I think we had, we went from five gigawatts of batteries to 10 gigawatts of batteries. After that point, we haven't hit the system wide offer cap, but like two times. Or we didn't in all of 2024, which meant prices didn't shoot to the roof, but two times. And the reason they didn't shoot to the roof is because batteries were sitting there, ready to go. And every time a price went higher than the next value, a battery was sitting there dispatching into the system, solving the condition. That's exactly the way Texas is supposed to work. Yeah, well, I'm going to ask you then a controversial question, which is, you know, we're building these high voltage 765 lines, the first of their kind in Texas. And I think the commission deserves a lot of credit for their advocacy and for pushing for the high voltage lines because we're not going to grow as a state if we can't move these cheap electrons around more efficiently. And a lot of the lines are just overloaded as you know in South Texas and different parts of the state. So my question is, you know, while we get those lines built, it's going to take time or those lines don't get built overnight. Couldn't a utility come in and put some batteries along one of those lines in Texas? Now, they're not allowed to deal in generation, right? Not allowed to own the battery. But should they be, right? Like, that's the controversial question. So shouldn't a utility be able to come in and say, look, we can do this for a fraction of the cost. We can line up batteries. We can get those electrons moving through distributed energy versus the more traditional capital expenditure. Well, one, that's a political topic. It's a subject for argument. Certainly, at the capital, I think a position that we should all agree to is a distribution operator, a wires delivery system operator should have access to the technology of batteries. Whether that is through owning it or renting it, they need access to batteries because they are, like I said, the Swiss Army knife of utility tools. They can do amazing things. They can act as a substation if they need to, basically converting power flows up and down whatever that area of the system dictates is needed. And as we enter the, I call this the Jurassic age of grid evolution because everything's just bigger. Think of dinosaurs. My kids like Jurassic Park. Everything is bigger now. And you're going to need batteries to help stabilize the system when everything is bigger. Yeah, I think you're right. And it feels like we're moving in that direction. And I love what you said about batteries answering the call because you can see other states looking at Texas as the example and kind of building the roadmap for how you manage those peaks and valleys with batteries charging and discharging. That's right. But the way we did it is so unique, right? Like it's all with competitive markets. And there are very few parts of the country that can really do what Texas did. No. And our queue has responded to the sense of urgency so quickly. Our queue expanded so quickly because they saw the need. And it was based on the market signals. And our market is criticized. But one thing our market is is hyper efficient. And you can see 40 gigawatts of natural gas generation installed over 10 years. And then you can see 10 gigawatts at a time have a signal to retire. But that is what the market is signaling. Now, we will debate whether we need insurance policies and, you know, extra money in the system. That's a political argument. But we are efficient. Yeah. Yeah. That's for sure. Well, I want to wrap this up. I don't want to take up too much of your time. But I do want to mention that since leaving the commission, you started your own firm. So the Gattoms Energy Group, that's the plug for everyone who's looking for great energy expertise. And, you know, I'm working at a trade association. We both have those relationships with companies that are innovating. I want to hear from you from, you know, the commission to advising some of these companies, which side is moving faster, right? Like what are you seeing in the private sector that maybe you weren't seeing on the policy side and vice versa? Like what can you give us a little bit of what are the differences there? Oh, companies, people are bringing their own tools. So Matt, when we were working together and I was on the commission, what was put in motion in the aftermath of your e-driven by fear? Okay, fear of it reoccurring again has only picked up pace, but it's not fear. It's, I need these tools. You know, I need to provide for myself or at least have the capability to provide for myself, because I know that that next factory is going to come in next door to me and they may change up the level of service that I experienced. I just need to provide for myself. So the beauty of our code is we can align the interests of everybody in a given area very quickly with a price signal or a market-based mechanism. And that's loads of all shapes and sizes. I see them all. I see a factory come in to Texas because they're re-shoring. I mean, this is happening because the United States wants to have their own capabilities here and they are bringing their own capabilities. They're putting in their own behind the meter generation. They're putting their own batteries in. They're putting their own solar panels up and it's all of the above. It is not a one trick pony. There's not just natural gas. It's natural gas paired with battery, paired with solar, all this stuff. It's an amazing time. And the reason I'm out of the commission and I feel for the commission because they have a lot of truly consequential decisions left to make. But it is fun being on the outside, being able to innovate, work on what is the optimal configuration of capabilities at a given location and how does that serve the greater good of that entire area around that? That is a good feeling and I'm blessed to be a part of it. Yeah, completely agree. The private sector moves so quickly and a lot of times the technology pushes the policy, right? So it's fun seeing where the technology is at and then anticipating where the policy is heading over the next five to ten years. Well, thank you so much. I want to say thank you again for your service to the country, to the state. I think you deserve a kind of credit for all of your leadership during your time with the legislature, during your time as a public utility commissioner. And you really got us to the place we're at now, which is a state that's leading the charge and welcoming all of these new innovative businesses. So thank you so much and just looking forward to rolling up our sleeves and getting to work. Me too. Good to be with you, Matt. Thank you. Thanks for listening to the energy capital podcast. If today's conversation helped you make sense of the energy world, share the episode with a friend and hit follow on your podcast app. You can find us on Apple podcasts, Spotify and all the usual platforms. For deeper analysis, each week, subscribe to the Texas Energy Empower newsletter at Texas Energy Empower.com. That's where you'll find every episode, every article and all of our latest updates. We're also on LinkedIn, X and YouTube, where we post clips, insights and ongoing commentary. Big thanks to Nate PV, our producer. I'm Matt Bombs and I'll see you next time. Stay curious, stay engaged and let's keep building a stronger, smarter energy future.