Will the lights stay on in 2012? Even Texas grid operators, who are coming off a tumultuous year, cannot say for certain. A lot will depend on the weather — namely, whether the state suffers through another piping-hot summer.

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a new rule on Wednesday aimed at reducing the amount of mercury and other toxic emissions from power plants. It is unlikely to improve Texas officials' low opinion of the federal agency.

Rolando Pablos, the former chairman of the Texas Racing Commission, will fill the empty slot at the Texas Public Utility Commission. Separately, the state's electric grid operator announced that its board chairwoman, Laura Doll, is stepping down.

The Legislature passed a handful of energy-saving measures this session, ranging from allowing churches access to an energy-efficiency loan program to recalibrating a statewide efficiency program.

The power failures earlier this month have called into question one of Texas' most basic tenets: that we do everything, including deregulation, better than anyone else.

When Texans turn on lights or plug in iPads, they are getting an increasing amount of power from the wind — and from coal plants. Last year, nearly 8 percent of the power on the state's electric grid was generated by wind, far above the national average. And coal plants produced more power than any other electricity source. The big loser was natural gas.

The impoverished border town of Presidio is home to the largest battery system in the country: a $25 million contraption that's the size of a big house. That's not as weird as it seems. Partly because of an affinity for wind energy, the state has a number of experiments going in "energy storage" — often referred to as the "holy grail" of energy technology, because it can modernize the grid by more efficiently matching people's demand for power with the generation of electricity.

Operators of the state’s electric grid are about to flip the switch on what could be the most significant change to the Texas energy market in a decade. The change to what’s called a “nodal” grid system happens on Dec. 1, but as Matt Largey of KUT News reports, it’s not clear what happens after that.

Texas already harvests more wind power than any state in the nation, bringing the promise of clean energy to millions of homes and businesses. Trouble is, getting that power from remote, windy West Texas to the big cities requires a massive, $5 billion network of transmission lines — which property owners in the Hill County and elsewhere don't want in their back yards. As construction gets under way on the new lines, an army of lawyers and angry landowners is working to stymie the state's renewable energy plans. Part one of a three-part series.

Texas has always operated its own electricity grid, separate from the two other grids that span the rest of the nation. But a project quietly emerging in eastern New Mexico could curb that independence — and affect energy prices here in ways that remain much in dispute.

Stiles on Bill White's donor-appointees, M. Smith on a form of meritless lawsuit that's still legal in Texas, Ramshaw on what federal health care reform means for the future of physician-owned specialty hospitals, Galbraith's interview with the chairman of the Public Utility Commission, Philpott on the latest flap over federal education funding, Grissom on the finally-in-compliance Dallas County Jail, Titus on the oiled pelicans of the BP spill, Hamilton's interview with the new chancellor of the Texas State University System, Ramsey on the political and legal definitions of residency, Hu on Barack Obama's visit to Austin and Aguilar on what the U.S. could be doing to aid Mexico: The best of our best from August 9 to 13, 2010.

Rather than building new power plants just to meet peak electricity demand on hot summer afternoons, why not just persuade people and companies to use less electricity? "Demand response" is quickly taking hold in Texas.

Since 1999, when then-Gov. George Bush signed a law that deregulated the Texas electricity market, a debate has raged about whether and how much the move has benefitted ordinary Texans. Who's right?

Jan Newton — who chairs the board of directors at the state's electric utility grid operator — is stepping down from that post, leaving the agency with interim officeholders and holes in key positions at the top of its organization chart.

For a certain kind of animal — i.e., the Policy Wonk — this is a gift: Sunset reports on insurance and utility regulators and on the capital city's transportation authority hit the internet this morning.

Smitherman says while it's probably legal for the state's top energy regulator to seek the ERCOT chief executive job, "it just doesn't feel right to go forward."

Many Texans like wind power. Few want electric transmission lines running through their ranches. Herein lies the problem.