Texas Grid Roundup #7, Week of March 26, 2024

Updates on how transmission bottlenecks are causing grid reliability problems, CenterPoint’s rate case, the Performance Credit Mechanism, and a controversial vote impacting batteries at ERCOT tomorrow

Photo Credit: Matthew Rader, Wikimedia Commons

I was at CERAWeek last week — you can read about some of my takeaways from that meeting, including from the annual CERAWeek Texas breakfast here — and have been catching up on ERCOT and PUC issues since. 

The PUC meeting last Thursday was an eventful one. I’ll have more on that in an article later this week. For now, please find updates on:

• How transmission constraints threaten grid reliability, how ERCOT’s manual constraints on September 6 did, in fact, nearly lead to rolling outages, and how that is likely to happen again this summer absent additional storage and demand response

• The PUC’s delay of the Performance Credit Mechanism

• A controversial proposal (NOGRR 245), with a key ERCOT vote tomorrow, which would hurt wind, solar, and batteries

• CenterPoint’s quadrennial rate case

As always, if you’re not already a paid subscriber, please become one today. If you are, thank you!

Big Vote on the Future of Solar and Storage at ERCOT Tomorrow