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Texas Rules on Threshold Issues for Entergy Competitive Generation Service Tariff
May 21, 2012
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Copyright 2010-
The Public Utility Commission of Texas has resolved threshold issues regarding the design of a competitive generation service (CGS) tariff at Entergy Texas, and with such direction parties will now work to bring a consensus final program design before the Commission for approval (Docket 38951).
The PUCT accepted without modification several previously reported stipulations regarding threshold issues, and, on the remaining unresolved threshold issue, held that unrecovered costs resulting competitive generation service which Entergy Texas will be permitted to recover are only those costs necessary to implement and administer the program. The PUCT ruled that unrecovered costs do not include Entergy's embedded generation costs or lost revenues.
Under the stipulations accepted by the PUCT, the competitive generation service tariff will only be available to Large Industrial Power Service (LIPS) customers with a minimum load of 5 MW, with no aggregation of load to reach that threshold.
The total competitive generation service load will be capped at 115 MW.
Furthermore, a stipulation concerning customer eligibility states that there will be a cap of "10 CGS Purchase Agreements." As previously reported, while parties agreed that the purchase agreement referred to the agreement between a CGS supplier and Entergy, stipulating parties are not of accord if this necessarily means that the CGS program is limited to 10 customers, or whether a CGS supplier could serve multiple customers under a single CGS purchase agreement. While parties are not in agreement, they said that the PUCT need not address this issue in ruling on the threshold issues, and the Commission did not issue an interpretation of the 10 CGS Purchase Agreement language during its open meeting Friday.
Per the accepted stipulations, CGS customers will remain retail customers of Entergy Texas, with the CGS supplier selling wholesale energy to Entergy.
CGS Suppliers will be limited to Qualifying Facilities that are or will be directly connected to Entergy Texas, Inc.
CGS Customers will pay an unbundled delivery rate, but with such unbundling attained through application of a bill credit. For CGS Customers in the Large Industrial Power Service class, the credit shall initially be $6.84 per kW per month.
Entergy will purchase hourly CGS energy supplied by the CGS Supplier from the CGS Contract Capacity at the system hourly avoided energy cost as determined under Rate Schedule LQF. Entergy will charge the CGS customer at the same rate for that hourly CGS-supplied energy not to exceed the energy requirement of the CGS customer.
Additionally, the level of compensation to Entergy from CGS Customers for CGS Service will include a monthly fixed charge called a Fixed Cost Contribution, which shall be $1.10 per kW of CGS load per month.
As noted above, Entergy may collect unrecovered costs of implementing and administering the CGS program. Such costs will be borne only by customers taking service under the CGS tariff.
Commissioner Kenneth Anderson, who had previously expressed reservations about the limits on customer participation in the CGS program, said during the open meeting he would "hold his nose" and accept the agreements, as he did want to stand in the way of the uncontested agreements among the parties. Still, Anderson said that the competitive generation service program at Entergy is, "barely consistent with the statute."
With the Commission providing direction on the threshold issues, parties will work on remaining issues whose outcome is dependent on the threshold issues, and will work to file a stipulated program design for Commission approval.
Copyright 2010-
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