ERCOT Finds Luminant's Retiring Sandow, Big Brown Units Not Needed For Transmission System Reliability

ERCOT issued a final determination that several Sandow and Big Brown generating units for which Luminant has announced retirement are not needed for transmission system reliability.

Specifically, ERCOT issued determinations that the following generation resources are not required to support ERCOT transmission system reliability:

• LUMINANT GENERATION COMPANY LLC (RE) – Sandow Unit 4 (SDSES_UNIT 4)

• SANDOW POWER COMPANY LLC (RE) – Sandow Unit 5 (SD5SES_UNIT 5)

• BIG BROWN POWER COMPANY LLC (RE) – Big Brown Unit 1 (BBSES_UNIT1) and Big Brown Unit 2 (BBSES_UNIT2)

With such determination, each of these resources may be decommissioned according to the schedule in their Notifications of Suspension of Operations.

The Notifications of Suspension of Operations filed by Luminant indicate that the two Sandow units will be decommissioned and retire permanently on January 11, 2018, and that the Big Brown units will be decommissioned and retire permanently on February 12, 2018.

The NSOs list the Seasonal Net Max Sustainable Rating (MW) of each of the four units as approximately 600 MW each