In Senate B&C right now: @DrSchwertner is grilling ERCOT CEO Pablo Vegas over comments made last night in the House hearing on #SB7 (the firming requirement bill). When asked by @toddahunter if SB 7 was needed, Vegas said it was not. #txlege
Vegas said that his comment was in relation to SB 7 as written's ability to accomplish the goal of efficiently allocating reliability costs to generators causing "unreliability."
Now @PUCTX exec dir Thomas Gleeson is asked about his comments made last night, saying that his statement was that "SB 7 was not necessary to keep the lights on."
Breaking: #SB14 —@DonnaCampbellTX/@TomOliverson’s bill banning gender modification procedures/treatments on minors — has been placed on Friday’s Major State Calendar in the Texas House. #txlege
“If it passes, RPT will likely advise county chairs, in an abundance of caution & unless the weight of the evidence is beyond any doubt, to accept all ballot applications & not reject any…for any… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
The bill would prohibit parties from denying eligible candidates from running on their ballots.
9 am update: Now entering what was projected earlier in the week to be the tightest hour, demand is lower than expected (still very high) and capacity is lower than expected. Normal conditions currently with 6,000 MW in reserve.
There have been some unexpected thermal outages this morning--4,162 MW more than the first hour of today. Unclear what units but as Daniel notes, they're in North Texas and Houston.
ERCOT expects demand to peak just shy of 77,000 MW later this morning — about 7k more than projected earlier this week and a would be record. Natgas is supplying almost 60% of the power right now and electricity prices are very high in most of the state.
ERCOT expects to have almost 89,000 MW capacity later this morning. The tightest margin is expected to come this am around 8 & then this evening as the sun sets. Wind is currently performing at 40% capacity and is expected to drop to as low as 11% while solar performs its best.