Thread by @douglewinenergy

There are big changes coming to #ERCOT. Are they the right changes? Are they enough? And what do we know about it so far? @PUCTX and @ERCOT_ISO held a press conference today. Some thoughts on the presser and other recent events below. #txlege #txenergy 1/
statesman.com/story/news/202…

Been a busy month: The presser today, along with a 7/1 PUC work session and 7/13 Senate hearing, And another @PUCTX workshop this Monday on transmission planning and how rotating outages/load shedding are done. Agenda & presentations were posted today 2/ interchange.puc.texas.gov/Documents/5226…

Additionally, the ERCOT Roadmap with 60 action items (aka the 60 points of light) was released last week plus @EnergyUT's report on causes of the Feb outages. Whew. 3/

energy.utexas.edu/ercot-blackout…
ercot.com/content/wcm/li…

Short term: next week will be HOT. @ERCOT_ISO CEO said we'll have enough generation to meet demand and also said conservation alerts are "a tool we intend to use." They're trying to get the word out: alerts *don't* mean imminent grid collapse. 4/ houstonchronicle.com/business/energ…

But the public is understandably nervous and experiencing some collective PTSD from being without power and water for days. Several questions from reporters were about trust. "We've got to earn it back," said Chair Lake. Indeed.
I'm worried there's alert fatigue. We'll see... 5/

Also today, Chair Lake said there will NOT be a capacity market in ERCOT. Said it was outside the scope of the legislation passed (SB3) and was not under consideration. Don't think that's been said before so I think it's newsworthy. #energytwitter #txenergy 6/

Next week's wild cards:
How much demand do we actually have and how close are the forecasts?
How many thermal outages are there? (If it's like June, there will be rolling outages but hopefully thermal does better)
How much wind and solar is do we get? 7/

Next week, when the peak approaches, lots of demand will go offline. That's because of "4CP" or 4 coincident peaks. Much of large commercial & industrial bills are from demand charges: whatever they use when the grid hits it's peak is what they're charged *all year*. 8/

It's called 4CP because it's an average of June, July, Aug., and Sept. Because July until now has been mild, the peak will almost certainly be set next week, causing lets of demand to reduce.

NOTE: We get none of this in the winter and nobody knows exactly how much we get. 9/

How much thermal generation will be offline? What grid planners expect to be "reliable" and "dispatchable" has been anything but in June, April, and Feb. About 15% of the termal fleet was offline in June and about 40% in Apr and Feb.

Will thermals show up next week? 10/

And how much wind and solar will we get? There's a lot more solar coming soon. We're at about 6.5GW now but we could see a little more next week. Wind typically hits a low point midday when solar peaks and picks up in the evening as the sun sets. Will that be the case next week?

Longer term: can we get more transmission to remove bottlenecks & bring more supply to meet demand? ERCOT listed this as an action item. PUC will address it in its workshop on tranmission Mon. with a focus on the Rio Grande Valley. #RGV #txlege 12/

ERCOT CEO Jones said “We want to look at our transmission planning process to push at the edges of that process to stay ahead... I’ve got a keen focus on the Valley because I believe we have underserved that area for the last 15 years.” #Txenergy #RGV 13/

Also on transmission, #txlege passed SB1281 to pave the way for more of it, and @GinaForAustin got an amendment onto the budget requiring the PUC to study interconnecting to other grids. They're required to determine "if reliability could be increased" through interconnection 14/

Also on the agenda for the @PUCTX workshop on Monday: load shedding. Presumably, they'll talk about how to rotate outages better but part of the discussion should be #demandresponse. Let's shed load customers are *willing* to shed FIRST! There's huge potential. #txlege 15/

At the 7/1 PUC work session, former PUC Chair @patwood3 said "storage + price responsive load is the missing interface in this very supply driven market." Well said. Two sides of the coin: supply and demand. Gotta address both or you have, at best, a half solution. #txlege 16/

And what about storage? It has potential to increase resiliency of the grid and there's a lot coming. Will it make a difference next week? Can we get long duration storage to help us next winter? Cmsr McAdams cited storage as a possible help during the Senate hearing. #txlege 17/

Chairman Lake said at the 7/1 work session: "Incentivize and pay for the results you want not how you get to the results." If the @PUCTX follows that recipe, there will be a mix of solutions and our grid will be more resilient. #txlege #txenergy 18/

The work session on Monday will be interesting. I'll try to tweet about it as it happens. It can be viewed (along with the 7/1 work session and today's presser, as well as open meetings) here. texasadmin.com/tx/puct/
#txlege #txenergy 19/end 🧵