As summer temperatures heat up, Michelle Richmond, executive director for Texas Competitive Power Advocates (TCPA) is still boiling over concerns about the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) board of directors ruling that effectively eliminates planned outages for maintenance, thereby increasing the risk of forced outages and therefore grid volatility in the future.
“TCPA is concerned that generators will not be afforded the needed time to conduct these planned outages which may result in a greater number of forced outages,” Richmond told the Austin Journal. “The stated intent for the change in outage scheduling was to increase reliability through greater visibility into how many megawatts are on outage at any given time. However, the potential for increased forced outages, such as some of those that occurred on May 13, actually reduces visibility and ultimately reliability because they are outages that were unplanned.”
Richmond added everything about the planned outages makes perfect sense.
“Just as any Texan wants to make sure their required car maintenance is conducted at the appropriate time to avoid their car breaking down on the road, generators want to take the needed planned outages to ensure these complex machines are running at their best performance, particularly when we need them during extreme heat or cold,” she said.
Changes to the Texas power market spearheaded by the Public Utility Commission (PUC) in the wake of the winter storm have already topped $1 billion and possibly stand to cost Texans at least double those costs by the end of the year, according to the Houston Chronicle. Instead of relying on traditional supply and demand changes to set the prices at which energy is brought to residents of the state, ERCOT and the PUC have been requiring generators to stay online to ensure that more than enough power is available.
The practice has raised concern among some who argue in addition to the added stress and strain on the already aging equipment others are losing money based on the stringent overproduction requirements.
“We have no proof or analysis, other than assertions by the PUC and ERCOT, that these measures are in fact improving reliability,” Alison Silverstein said, according to the Houston Chronicle. Silvertein is an Austin-based energy consultant who worked for the PUC from 1995 to 2001 and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from 2001 to 2004. “They have not been clear or straightforward in accounting for the full costs of reliability. The uncertainty surrounding the market has reportedly spooked investors.”