During a recent Senate Business and Commerce Committee hearing reviewing recommendations from the Public Utilitity Commission (PUC) related to a redesign of Texas' electricity market, State Sen. Donna Campbell (R-New Braunfels) signaled her skepticism at the underlying assumptions and conclusions offered in the PUC report.
In the Texas Senate Business and Commerce Committee on Nov. 17, Chairman Charles Schwertner opened the meeting by stating, "Today we will be discussing charges related to electricity and blockchain and virtual currencies. First on the agenda is the implementation of Senate Bill 3 and other reforms passed last session to improve the communication, coordination and oversight of the Texas electric grid in the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri and as to whether or not the E3 RFP and the actions of the PUC are consistent with the direction of the legislature."
On Nov. 10, a report written by E3 was released by the Public Utility Commission of Texas. E3 performed a quantitative and qualitative review on a range of proposed market designs that produced the attached PUC report. In summary, this report provides an independent assessment of potential long-term market design reform options to promote the supply of dispatchable generation and focus on reliability as outlined in Phase 2 of the blueprint published by the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) in December 2021. Under the direction of the PUCT and its staff, the consulting team of E3 and Astrape Consulting developed and analyzed six specific market design options and compared the impacts of each against a status quo energy-only market design.
Campbell was not convinced, calling the report a "flawed study that accomplishes nothing."
"The study is flawed because it's based on assumptions that are not necessarily true. I'm not convinced at all that this was a great study. I'm concerned that there may be effort to put something out there ... just to say you did something. I'm opining here but I wouldn't want that because that's costly and wrong to do," Campbell said.
According to a July 2021 press release, Gov. Greg Abbott wrote a formal letter directing the Texas Public Utility Commission to take immediate action to improve the reliability of the Texas power grid. Actions meant to be specifically and immediately taken included streamline incentives within the ERCOT market to foster the development and maintenance of adequate and reliable sources of power, like natural gas, coal and nuclear power; allocate reliability costs to generation resources that cannot guarantee their own availability, such as wind or solar power; instruct ERCOT to establish a maintenance schedule for natural gas, coal, nuclear and other non-renewable electricity generators to ensure that there is always an adequate supply of power on the grid to maintain reliable electric service for all Texans; and order ERCOT to accelerate the development of transmission projects that increase connectivity between existing or new dispatchable generation plants and areas of need.
Life:Powered has noted the problems the Texas energy grid is currently facing has been predictable due to over investment in unreliable generation and under investment in reliability measures. More than $60 billion was invested in solar and wind energy generation since 2011 and those sources only produced 1 GW of power during 2021's Winter Storm Uri. Any measures to protect wind and solar are counterproductive if they aren't done in sync with market reforms.
Campbell represents the 25th District in the Texas State Senate. Before entering public service, she was a board certified ophthalmologist and emergency medicine physician. She received her medical degree from Texas Tech University.