The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), on track to begin its pilot deregulation program in 5% of the state June 1, issued a progress report to the Texas Public Utility Commission this week, reporting that it now is finalizing megawatt registrations for generators that will serve the state. Conversion remains on schedule for the pilot, with transition to a fully deregulated market by January 2002.

ERCOT’s Cheryl Moseley and Sam Jones told the PUC that so far nearly 400 market participation applications have been received with more still to register. Moseley said that ERCOT is attempting to pull all of the information received and have it ready for the pilot kick off. ERCOT attempted to begin running a mock market in early April to simulate the pilot, but found it still needed to do some testing.

ERCOT, which is one of 10 regional reliability councils in the North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) organization, represents a bulk electric system located totally within the State of Texas and serves about 85% of Texas’s electrical load.

Currently, it has a generating capability of about 65,000 MW and experienced a 1999 summer peak demand of about 54,849 MW. Because of its intrastate status, the primary regulatory authority for ERCOT utilities is the Public Utility Commission of Texas. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) exercises limited authority, and will continue to do so when the state is deregulated.

ERCOT membership currently consists of retail consumers, six cooperatives and river authorities, six municipals owning generation or transmission, four investor-owned utilities, 13 independent power producers, 23 power marketers and 14 transmission dependent utilities.

Last November, FERC issued a staff report on bulk power markets throughout the country, and ERCOT was the only one receiving high marks (see Daily GPI, Nov. 10, 2000). The report found the Texas system is adding sufficient generation and transmission and “the ERCOT area is much less likely to encounter the sharp price spikes that have been experienced in previous years.”

©Copyright 2001 Intelligence Press Inc. All rights reserved. The preceding news report may not be republished or redistributed, in whole or in part, in any form, without prior written consent of Intelligence Press, Inc.