Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative Latest Utility Seeking To Join ERCOT

During yesterday's open meeting, Public Utility Commission of Texas Chairman Donna Nelson said that she had been contacted by Rayburn Country Electric Cooperative as well as Lone Star Transmission concerning a project proposed to move the small portion of Rayburn that is currently within SPP to ERCOT

Currently, 85% of Rayburn load is in ERCOT, with 15% in SPP.

Rayburn has initiated a process at ERCOT to conduct a study on such integration

Along with the proposed movement of Lubbock Power & Light into ERCOT, Commissioner Kenneth Anderson said that the Commissioner should consider requiring that if any such integrations require costs to be born by ratepayers outside of the joining utilities, the joining utilities should be prevented from exiting ERCOT, or otherwise required to make ERCOT ratepayers whole for the prior integration costs

Anderson and Nelson both said that any such integrations should ensure ERCOT does not fall under the jurisdiction of FERC, with Anderson noting that having utilities that frequently switch between RTOs could raise such jurisdictional issues