ERCOT STAKEHOLDERS TO REVISIT PAYING POWER GENERATORS TO RAMP DOWN
Houston (Platts)–9 Feb 2016 633 pm EST/2333 GMT
Generators required by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas to ramp down for grid reliability may be compensated under a proposal ERCOT’s board has asked stakeholders to reconsider, in response to an appeal of the proposal’s failure in committee.
At issue is Nodal Protocol Revision Request 649, which addresses ERCOT’s out-of-merit dispatch overrides of generators’ plans to produce at their high sustainable limit.
The NPRR was sponsored by ERCOT staff partly to settle an appeal to the Public Utility Council of Texas by Odessa-Ector Power Partners of ERCOT’s denial of resettlement of payments to Odessa-Ector over the period of November 15, 16 and 20, 2012. On May 14, 2014, a PUCT administrative law judge issued a proposed order granting the appeal. On July 16, 2014, ERCOT filed a motion to settle the matter in Odessa-Ector’s favor.
Odessa-Ector’s losses as a result of those days’ out-of-merit dispatch overrides were documented to exceed $300,000, ERCOT said in its NPRR documentation.
Filed in September 2014, NPRR 649 spent more than a year under discussion in various stakeholder groups before finally being taken up by the Technical Advisory Committee on November 19, 2015, where by roll-call vote 56% supported the measure, but TAC rules require the support of at least a two-thirds majority before it could be considered passed.
Opponents said that since ERCOT implemented a nodal market in December 2010, out-of-merit dispatch orders to ramp down generation have been rare and do not justify the estimated project cost of $150,000 to $200,000. They also expressed concern that generators would be paid more than their cost for ramping down, essentially paying for lost-opportunity cost, rather than out-of-pocket costs.
On December 7, Koch Ag & Energy Solutions, which owns Odessa-Ector, appealed the TAC decision, but that was not soon enough to be considered by the ERCOT board at its December meeting.
