Texas Generator to Pay $10,000 Under Settlement

Exelon Generation Company LLC would pay $10,000 under a settlement with Staff of the Public Utility Commission of Texas to resolve alleged violations of ERCOT Protocol § 3.9(7), related to current operating plans (COP).

Each Qualified Scheduling Entity (QSE) must submit a revised Current Operating Plan (COP) reflecting changes in Resource availability as soon as reasonably practicable, but in no event later than 60 minutes after the event that caused the change

According to the settlement, Exelon's COP submittals on February 2, 2014 failed to reflect a change in the Resource status for two of its units within the required 60 minutes following receipt of a Reliability Unit Commitment (RUC) instruction from ERCOT.

The settlement states that, according to an Independent Market Monitor (IMM) investigation, it took Exelon more than 3 hours to revise its COP to reflect the RUC instruction from ERCOT for two of its Handley units, HLSES_UNIT4 and HLSES UNIT5.

Exelon asserts that it had scheduled the Handley 5 unit to run 10 minutes prior to receipt of the RUC instruction but, due to timing of the ERCOT snapshot, ERCOT was not aware of the capacity change prior to issuance of the RUC instruction. HLSES_UNIT5 showed as "ON" for subsequent RUC snapshots prior to Exelon's update to the ERCOT COP.

Exelon asserts that it completed updates to the COP within its internal systems to reflect "ONRUC" Resource Status within 60 minutes from receipt of the RUC instruction. However, Exelon asserts that it was delayed in updating the ERCOT COP due to validation issues, as well as efforts to bring back on line a combustion turbine that had experienced a forced outage earlier in the morning and to bring other replacement units online, thereby contributing to the overall reliability of the grid.

Docket 44354