Rayburn Electric Cooperative broke ground in June on a 570 MW gas plant in Sherman, backed by a $411 million Texas Energy Fund loan at 3 percent, the fund’s seventh generation loan and first to a cooperative.

Rayburn is also putting batteries in members’ houses. Both run on the same logic: Rayburn generates the power and owns the transmission, so it earns on both. An independent power producer earns on energy alone.

On this week’s Energy Capital Podcast, Matt Boms talks with Christian Nagel, senior director of power supply and production at Rayburn.

* Home batteries as a transmission asset. Texas allocates transmission costs on four summer peaks, so discharging batteries then cuts Rayburn’s bill, worth more, Nagel says, than the energy.

* Telling real load from speculative. Rayburn screened data centers with its own questionnaire before ERCOT standardized one. Abbott’s audit has since pushed ERCOT’s Batch Zero study past April 2027.

* Plus: the 12CP fight and what comes after gas.

Whether Rayburn is a model or a special case turns on rules the PUCT has not written.

Chapters

00:00 – Introduction

01:36 – Wind development and the landowner conversation

06:02 – The video that went viral

08:17 – Using your service to open doors

10:23 – The Atlantic Council years

12:19 – Her graduate research on energy and national security

14:44 – From Annapolis to flying Growlers

19:54 – Grounded, and the move to cryptologic warfare

23:59 – Why veterans run down their own service

30:08 – Advice for veterans trying to get into energy

32:56 – How to plug into Project Vanguard

34:49 – Closing thoughts

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