The @PUCTX unveiled their draft biennial report to #txlege (previously the "Scope of Competition" report). In the section on retail competition, they fail to note that 2 companies own ~80% of the retail market. Seems like an important omission, no?
@PUCTX also fails to inform the legislature that 4 companies own 65% of the generating plants in ERCOT.
PUCT notes "robust stakeholder process." Stakeholders/members of ERCOT will lose their voting rights in an ERCOT board vote this coming Tuesday. #txlege#txenergy
Oh, that's cute: "On 9/9/22, ERCOT opened public comment on additional proposed amendment to the Bylaws. These amendments would clarify
the role of ERCOT's Corporate Members" (50)
"Clarify"? ERCOT members will be stripped of their voting rights. I guess that's a form of clarity.
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Why I don't think there will be power outages this week, a thread: 1) It'll be ~10° warmer than Uri w/no snow/ice so:
- peak demand will be lower
- shouldn’t be nearly as many issues for gas supply & power plants 2) Peak demand @ 10am instead of overnight #txlege#txwx 1/
Peak demand forecast is 69.5GW. Peak during Uri was between 76-82GW. However, the power went out in the early morning hours of Feb 15 at ~69.5GW, so that is very high demand. *But* the peak hitting at 10am instead of 1am is a massive difference. #txenergy 2/
There is little to no expected snow or ice so at 10am: 1) we'll have lots of solar production (more on that below) and 2) workers can get to sites where there are freezing issues. In many cases, they couldn't during the Uri #texasblackouts 3/
"Residential demand is the low hanging fruit in Texas... For every dollar spent, the benefit reaped was roughly $3.80 in 2021...demand-side fixes would take less time & money compared with building new gas fired power plants." #txlege#txenergy 1/4 wsj.com/articles/texas…
"Texas households tend to use electric resistance heating, which involves an electricity-intensive system of warming up coils & then blowing air over them (much like hair dryers). Heat pumps, which use refrigerants, require much less electricity." 2/4
"@ACEEEdc estimates that implementing a set of residential energy efficiency & demand response measures in Texas would offset about 11.4 GW of winter peak load." But we haven't increased #energyefficiency at all since Uri! #txlege#energytwitter 3/4
The Senate weighed in on the grid & the @PUCTX's proposed market design changes last week. Today, the House State Affairs Cmte meets to ask questions of the PUC, #ERCOT, the Independent Market Monitor & industry. I'll tweet some highlights here. #txlege 1/ dallasnews.com/news/politics/…
The Texas Senate dealt a major setback to the efforts of the PUC Chair & some generators attempting to redesign the #ERCOT market, telling them to hold off. The PUCT's biggest mistake? They never defined the problems they're trying to solve. 1/🧵 #txlege dallasnews.com/news/politics/…
Unfortunately, it seems that #txlege is repeating that mistake. I think there are three major problems we need to solve: (1) prolonged extreme winter storms (2) hot summer evenings & (3) cost.
We need to identify & diagnose the problem correctly. Acc'g to @FERC & @NERC_Official, during Uri, Texas had massive demand (spiked by inefficient heat) & frozen gas supply & power plants (made catastrophic by lack of effective regulation). #txenergy 3/
#ERCOT Winter Seasonal Assessment is out. While ERCOT and @PUCTX disputed @FERC's October assessment that we would have a deficit of 18GW in extreme cold, ERCOT finds in an extreme event, we would be short 9-12GW which would result in lenghty outages. #txlege 1/
The biggest problem with the SARA report is they only account for three major problems:
- high demand
- high thermal outages
- low wind
They still don't account for gas supply disruption, which could make outages >9-12GW in the winter. This is not yet fixed. #txenergy 2/
Good to see ERCOT finally acknolwedge that extreme winter demand could reach 80GW. I still think that undershoots it a bit (@AndrewDessler & team think demand in Feb 2021 was 82GW) but is closer to reality than ERCOT has ever acknowledged before. 3/ ercot.com/files/docs/202…
Big day at #txlege today. Hearing in Senate B&C focused on fixing the grid, proposed ERCOT market changes and in Sen Natural Resources on economic development programs (incl. for energy) and implementation of a bill that bans state investment in sustainable investors #txlege 1/🧵
Here's the first part of the agenda in Senate B&C. Mostly usual suspects. None of the panels will have represention for residential consumers, community groups, renewable energy, battery storage, academia, etc. #txlege#txenergy