Thread by @douglewinenergy

At ERCOT Board meeting tmrw & at a Texas House Cmte Wed, #ERCOT’s Independent Market Monitor (IMM) will present. The IMM quantified the cost of recent @PUCTX policy changes in her ERCOT presentation & there are some shocking numbers. 1/🧵
#txlege #txenergy
renewableenergyworld.com/solar/the-stat…

Here’s the presentation she’ll make tomorrow. The kicker is in this slide: The “conservative operating posture” of the @PUCTX & @ERCOT_ISO have cost consumers a minimum of $670m over only five months. (The range is $670-$845m)
#txlege #energytwitter 2/
ercot.com/files/docs/202…

The news here is the RUC costs, which market participants & consumer advocates have been sounding the alarm about for months. In my @REWorld article I said it was hard to tell exactly what RUCs cost, but now we know: $460m ytd thru 5/31/22. That’s more than I would've guessed. 3/

In fact, in March, I estimated to @rtoinsider that the non-spin & RUC costs were ~$1b/yr. @ERCOT_ISO's CEO told @tkleckner1 those costs were "way off." He was right, sort of. Turns out, I drastically *underestimated* the cost. Over a year it's ~$1.6 - $2b!
rtoinsider.com/articles/29726…

In that same article, I told @tkleckner1 it would be nice to have some actual numbers. Now we have them. These costs are shockingly high, PUC & ERCOT are adding ~10% to power costs. That's 100s of dollars to most Texas families and 1000s for Texas businesses. #txlege 5/

The IMM says these out-of-market non-spin & RUC procurements only "may" improve reliability. So it begs the question, which I hope the ERCOT Board & #txlege members will ask: what are we paying for and is it worth it? At this point, the energy-only market only barely remains. 6/

Why does this matter? Look at the prices on powertochoose.com. You’ll see some gaudy numbers, hovering around 20c for a one year contract, highest in modern history in Texas, and among the highest in the nation.
#energytwitter #txlege 7/
dallasnews.com/business/energ…

Remember, it's not just rates. Texans now have higher rates *and* higher use. Texans consume more power than most Americans bc (1) homes are bigger & it’s really hot (this summer esp.) & (2) we have very low #energyefficiency goals leading to higher use—and higher bills. #txlege

*Before* all these costly changes and the fallout from the February outages, we paid the 7th highest power bills in the nation.
#txlege #txenergy 9/
citizensutilityboard.org/wp-content/upl…

We're in a power affordability crisis in Texas now & these costs are likely to go up even more.

Note, costs would likely be higher w/out the fantastic performance of combined #wind & #solar in May & June. The House Cmte will also discuss transmission congestion on Thursday. 10/

Will be interesting to hear the discussions @ ERCOT & in the House, esp. from the IMM. Will they throttle back on these costly policies or stick with them? Will they recommend or take action to help customers with their insanely high power costs?
#txlege #energytwitter 11/

Remember too, this #ERCOT Board is now politically appointed bc of #SB2 so there's an added political dimension to these higher costs.

SB2 is another topic at the 2nd day of House hearings on Thursday (along with weatherization and transmission congestion).
#txlege 12/

ERCOT Board docs here: ercot.com/calendar/event…
ERCOT livestream here at 8:30 tmrw: ercot.com/committees/boa…
House agendas here: house.texas.gov/schedules/comm…
House livestream here: house.texas.gov/video-audio/
13/End🧵