Texas passes bill giving PUC wind transmission oversight; bill to end RPS dies

A Texas bill to give the state Public Utility Commission oversight of transmission projects designed to export wind power from or into the Electric Reliability Council of Texas region is headed to the governor’s desk after being approved by the state’s House of Representatives.

However, a Senate-passed bill that would have eliminated the state’s renewable portfolio standard and forbidden the PUC from either establishing new “competitive renewable energy zones” or approving new CREZ transmission lines was derailed by the House and is dead for this session.

Both bills were introduced by Senator Troy Fraser, a Republican who was instrumental in enacting Texas’s landmark electric industry restructuring law in 1999 and who said repealing the RPS and freezing the CREZ program were needed to keep ERCOT’s deregulated market on track.