Jeff St. John
September 15, 2015
This summer, Texas grid operator ERCOT started working on ideas for opening the state’s energy markets to distributed energy resources, by allowing the grid-scale aggregation of rooftop customer-sited generators. It’s a move similar to those being taken in solar-rich states like California and Hawaii, only with Texas’ unique deregulated market flavor.
One interesting question is how to build distributed energy resource (DER) portfolios with enough flexibility to optimize their value to the grid and their owners, but not so much flexibility that companies can game the system. It’s a concern in the state that spawned Enron, and it’s part of the discussion around ERCOT’s new concept paper, released last week, that lays out a first official outline of what the state’s DER future might look like.
