Texas PUC Chair Provides Consumer Cost, To Date, Of Additional Reserves, Other Reliability Actions For This Summer

During a press briefing on actions that the Texas PUC and ERCOT are taking to improve grid reliability as the hottest days of summer approach, PUC Chairman Peter Lake provided the consumer cost, to date, of certain reliability actions the PUC has directed ERCOT to undertake for this summer

"All-in, the dollars spent so far this summer for the dramatic increases in both reserves and generators forced into service total less than $2 per person across all citizens within ERCOT," Lake said

In terms of additional reserves, Interim ERCOT CEO Brad Jones said that, across the peak, ERCOT has in the past had 5,000 MW that are not committed to serving energy in the market.

In early June, ERCOT has increased such reserves to 6,500 MW across peak

In July, ERCOT has called 38% more reserves than last year. In August, ERCOT has already procured 56% more reserves than last year, Lake said

ERCOT has also purchased an additional 1,500 MW of non-spin, and 500 MW of responsive reserves

In terms of future market design, Lake said that the goal is to accomplish such re-design without increasing costs to consumers, by moving current revenues provided in the market to provide incentives for reliability and accountability and re-allocating such revenues to generators that are more dispatchable

Lake said that the structure for the market redesign is intended to be adopted before the end of the year

Lake also reiterated, as first stated at a recent Senate hearing as previously reported (story here), that, "The [ERCOT] market needs to move away from a crisis-based business model."

"We need to have a market design so that if you provide reliability, that's where the financial incentive is presented," Lake had said at such hearing