Texas Generator To Pay $60,000 Under Settlement With Texas PUC Staff

NRG Texas Power, LLC (NRG) would pay $60,000 under a settlement with Staff of the Public Utility Commission of Texas to resolve alleged violations of 16 Texas Administrative Code (TAC) § 25.503(f)(2), concerning failure to adhere to Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) Protocols § 8.1.1.4.3(3), relating to Non-Spinning Reserve Service (NSRS) Energy Deployment Criteria.

The settlement states that, "NRG's THWGT51 and THWGT52 generation resources are qualified to provide NSRS. On January 23, 2018, THWGT51 and THWGT52 each had an off-line NSRS responsibility of 57 MW."

The settlement states that, "Within twenty minutes of receiving an NSRS deployment instruction from ERCOT, NRG must update the telemetered Ancillary Service Schedule for the off-line generation resource to reflect the deployment amount, which indicates to SCED that the resource is available to be deployed."

The settlement states that, "Within twenty-five minutes of receiving an NSRS deployment instruction from ERCOT, NRG must ensure that THWGT51 and THWGT52 are on-line with an energy offer curve, and the telemetered net generation for each resource must be greater than or equal to the resource's telemetered LSL in megawatts (MW) multiplied by P1, or 0.90. Once THWGT51 and THWGT52 have met that threshold, NRG must telemeter the resource status code 'ON' to indicate that the resource is online."

The settlement states that, "On January 23, 2018 at 06:43 AM, NRG received an NSRS deployment instruction from ERCOT for THWGT51 and THWGT52. Accordingly, NRG had to satisfy the three requirements listed above. NRG failed to timely meet any of these requirements."

The settlement states that, "NRG failed to update its Ancillary Service Schedule within 20 minutes of receiving the deployment instruction from ERCOT. NRG was four minutes late in updating its Ancillary Service Schedule."

The settlement states that, "THWGT51 and THWGT52 failed to reach 90% of each resource's LSL within 25 minutes of receiving the deployment instruction from ERCOT. THWGT51 and THWGT52 both achieved 90% of their respective LSLs eight minutes late."

The settlement states that,"NRG failed to change the resource status code to 'ON' within 25 minutes of receiving the deployment instruction from ERCOT. NRG was four minutes late in updating the status code."

The settlement states that, "To mitigate the occurrence of similar violations in the future, NRG made configuration changes to its dispatch systems and updated monitoring displays to better inform its operators."