Oh oh. New rules for the Texas electric grid costs far more than the $8 billion originally estimated last summer.
Now it’s more than $12 billion, according to a review of the Electric Reliability Council of Texas by its watchdog, Potomac Economics. The new estimate is also being disputed by ERCOT.
The grid took steps in June to set aside a pool of reserves so it can respond to cover shortfalls. But it also resulted in higher real-tme power prices during the summer, prompting David Patton with Potomac Economics to call it the “worst performance” he’s seen since electricity markets were organized 25 years ago.
“I’ve never seen anything remotely this bad,” he reportedly told an ERCOT stakeholder committee this week.
ERCOT disagrees with the analysis, saying the $12 billion estimate did not include direct costs but rather an estimate of what it might have saved it hadn’t reserved extra capacity reported Bloomberg.
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