Haynes Boone Partner Diana Liebmann is featured in a Natural Gas Intelligence (NGI) podcast discussing the record hot Texas summer and how the electric grid is coping. Diana answers the question: In the aftermath of Winter Storm Uri, have the changes implemented by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) helped improve reliability?
Below are excerpts from NGI’s “Hub & Flow:"
Diana: “Now, if it looks like grid conditions are going to be worsening, the call to the public to respond is going to happen earlier. So, we are going to see that a lot more often than we did in the past. In the past, ERCOT would do everything it could to try to stay out of emergency, but if we got to that point … then they were going to call for help. So, the number of times that we got calls for help was a lot less than it will be going forward. And I think that’s a good thing because it brings a public awareness to the situation. It also gives ERCOT another tool in its toolbox.”
Editor Leticia Gonzales: What are some of the other changes that ERCOT and the Public Utility Commission made after Uri that are already in place this summer?
Diana: “There have been a number of different changes that have occurred. One of them is the way the market is operated. ERCOT is taking what they refer to as the conservative approach for market operations, where they have generating capacity stay online for longer and have more capacity available than is necessary to meet the day-to-day demand of the system. So, the operation of the grid is different. That has consequences economically for consumers and also for resources and generators that get run harder during those periods, as well.”
The full podcast can be heard here. (18 minutes)
