Jennifer Newman, Vice President, Atmospheric Science Research
This blog references data from our new Reports feature within REsurety’s CleanSight platform. Contact us today for more info and to access.
For clean energy investors and buyers in Texas, curtailment is often the hidden risk that eats away at both MWh and REC targets. While it’s easy to assume that negative nodal prices automatically lead to curtailed generation, the reality is far more nuanced. Economic incentives, driven by tax credits and specific contract structures, dictate when a project keeps spinning and when it shuts down.
We’ve launched the ERCOT Curtailment Lens dashboard within the new Reports feature of our CleanSight platform. Reports is our home for data-driven, interactive dashboards designed to help you navigate market volatility.
Using data from 291 wind and solar projects across ERCOT, the ERCOT Curtailment Lens allows you to visualize these risks across geography, fuel type, and time. By analyzing ERCOT’s SCED reports to infer curtailment – by comparing basepoint and high dispatch limit (HDL) data – the ERCOT Curtailment Lens is able to shed light on exactly how much curtailment is happening in ERCOT, and where. Here are a few notable takeaways:
1. Geography matters
In transmission-constrained areas of ERCOT, such as the Texas Panhandle and the Rio Grande Valley, negative nodal price frequency can exceed 20% (see figure 1 below).
These regions frequently suffer from a structural imbalance between renewable supply and demand. In the Panhandle, high wind production far outstrips local demand, but there isn’t enough transmission capacity to move that power to major cities. Similarly, transmission out of South Texas is limited; when wind production peaks, the system hits a bottleneck. To prevent the grid from overloading, the market sends a negative price signal to tell generators to stop. If your project is behind one of these constraints, the clean energy you’re counting on is effectively trapped, directly threatening your expected REC delivery.
2. Breakeven economics change with PTCs
Negative prices don’t necessarily equal curtailment. Most wind projects under 10 years old receive a Production Tax Credit (PTC) of $27.50/MWh (adjusted for inflation). This means their “breakeven” price is actually close to -$30/MWh. They will continue to generate even when real-time power prices are significantly negative.
Conversely, projects without a PTC (older wind projects, or solar on an Investment Tax Credit) typically curtail when nodal prices hit $0/MWh, as they aren’t earning credits on a per-MWh basis. This difference is stark in the data: the median nodal price during curtailment in 2025 was -$24/MWh for wind projects versus just -$2.42/MWh for solar.
3. Case study: The impact of PTCs at Camp Springs I
The impact of rolling off the PTC isn’t theoretical; it results in noticeably different operating behavior. Take the Camp Springs I Wind Project. It began producing power in 2007 and rolled off its PTC incentive in 2017. As shown in the dashboard screenshot below, there is a clear, dramatic increase in curtailment frequency the moment the project no longer had the tax credit to offset negative pricing, suggesting that tax credits have a strong influence on curtailment behavior.
4. Case study: CED Crane Solar and the impact of regional load growth
While financial incentives like the PTC provide a revenue shield, a project’s physical location relative to evolving demand centers is a critical driver of performance. In the Permian Basin, explosive load growth from data center development and industrial electrification is creating a natural hedge against curtailment by consuming power locally.
CED Crane Solar serves as a clear example of this dynamic. Despite the massive expansion of solar capacity in West Texas, which typically correlates with increased curtailment, CED Crane has maintained a stable and at times declining curtailment rate over the last two years. This trend suggests that robust regional load growth allows renewable generation to be absorbed locally rather than being restricted by grid-wide transmission bottlenecks.
5. Contractual nuances: Beyond the tax credit
While tax credits and load growth are two significant drivers, offtake contracts can further complicate the “so what” of curtailment.
- Fixed Payments: If a project receives a fixed price or REC payment per MWh, they may generate even in deeply negative territory. This is a common phenomenon in CAISO (see this article), where projects bid very negative prices to capture REC or PPA revenue.
- Basis Risk: Many PPAs are hub-settled, meaning a project can face a net loss if the market hub price is significantly higher than its local nodal price (a market dynamic known as basis risk). During these high basis periods, a project may choose to economically curtail even if nodal prices are positive. To manage this risk and incentivize projects to continue generating, some PPA contracts include basis sharing clauses that limit a project’s financial exposure or allow for nodal settlement during extreme basis events.
Explore the insights yourself
Understanding these trends is the difference between a project that helps you reach your sustainability goals and one that falls short. The ERCOT Curtailment Lens gives you the tools to see exactly how these factors play out across the ERCOT grid. Filter by fuel type or time period to see how curtailment is impacting the assets you care about most.
Access is limited to REsurety subscribers. Contact us below or email [email protected] to access the full ERCOT Curtailment Lens, along with our first Reports release, The State of the Market for Clean Power Offtake.
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