Commission appears to back plan for energy market redesign

It was unclear how any final plan would affect customers of city-owned
CPS Energy in San Antonio. The PUC was still discussing its options Thursday afternoon.

Introduced by the PUC in November after it had been studying other plans for months, the Performance Credit Mechanism would give power generators a credit for being available during certain hours on days with the lowest reserve power margins. Those credits would be paid for by retail electricity providers, the companies that sell residential power plans and whose names show up on monthly power bills, as well as cooperatives and municipal utilities.

On ExpressNews.com:

A PUC vote today could shake up ERCOT. Here’s a look at what’s on the table — and what it means

The PUC and others have for the past year had been debating the merits of three plans to change the power market. They’re known as the Backstop Reliability Service, Dispatchable Energy Credits and the Load-Serving Entity Obligation. Then, in November, a report commissioned by the PUC added two new options — the Performance Credit Mechanism and a combined Backstop Reliability Service and Dispatchable Energy Credits plan.

CPS hasn’t responded to inquiries about whether it supports the Performance Credit model or how it might be affected by the market redesign. So it’s far from clear how San Antonio household’s utility bills could be affected by the changes. A consultant’s estimate suggests the model would add
$460 million of costs that Texas ratepayers would have to shoulder
in the form of higher bills.

In October, CPS declined to comment on the market redesign proposals, saying it was awaiting a report from the PUC’s consultant with technical details about the different redesign options. CPS has not commented publicly on the process since.

However, CPS appears to be trying to interact less with the statewide power market that the PUC is redesigning.

The utility’s board of trustees is set to vote Monday on a plan that would have CPS add nearly 2,220 megawatts of natural gas-fired capacity and nearly 1,100 megawatts of solar generation this decade. That’s enough capacity to power about 600,000 homes on a summer day.

While other energy portfolios it has considered would more quickly slash pollution in San Antonio, CPS executives and Mayor Ron Nirenberg have maintained that CPS needs to operate its own gas-fired power plants for decades more to avoid potentially volatile prices on the ERCOT power market.

“If you no longer have natural gas assets that you control, that you can lean on in events like (Winter Storm Uri in February 2021) … then you’re buying whatever the price in the market is,” Garza told City Council members last week.

Nirenberg made a similar argument in favor of CPS’ proposed plan last week.

“People want to make sure that we can affordably keep the lights on in San Antonio,” he said. “In this scenario, we are owning more of that ability ourselves.”

Staff writer Shelby Webb contributed to this article.

diego.mendoza-moyers@express-news.net