Texas governor wants renewables to pay for backup power

Gov. Greg Abbott in a July 6 letter directed the Public Utility Commission of Texas to build on new laws passed in the wake of February's deadly winter storm to ensure the stability of the Electric Reliability Council Of Texas Inc. grid through providing incentives to build new fossil fuel plants and requiring operators of renewable energy facilities to pay for backup power.

Abbott, a Republican, urged commission Chairman Peter Lake and members Will McAdams and Lori Cobos to ease the development and maintenance of fossil fuel and nuclear plants. He also told the commissioners — all three of whom he appointed this year after their predecessors stepped down in the wake of the storm, which nearly brought down ERCOT's grid, causing hundreds of deaths — to assign reliability costs to intermittent renewable energy resources such as wind and solar plants.

"Electric generators are expected to provide enough power to meet the needs of all Texans," Abbott wrote. "When they fail to do so, those generators should shoulder the costs of that failure. Failing to do so creates an uneven playing field between non-renewable and renewable energy generators and creates uncertainty of available generation in ERCOT."

Abbott, in the immediate wake of the storm, on national television blamed the disaster on renewable energy resources, telling Fox News' Sean Hannity that "our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10% of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a statewide basis."

"It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary for the state of Texas as well as other states to make sure that we'll be able to heat our homes in the wintertime and cool our homes in the summertime," Abbott added.

ERCOT data released after the storm showed that the largest amount of capacity that was unavailable was natural gas, at 27 GW, equaling 52% of the fuel source. Some 18 GW of wind was offline, 57% of the fuel. About 6 GW of coal was offline, for 44% of the resource, while roughly 750 MW of solar, or 12% of the resource and 700 MW of nuclear, or about 13% of that fuel, was out of service.

Renewable energy groups lobbied hard against a provision in one of the sweeping power market reform bills that would have assigned renewable energy generators costs in the ancillary services market to help pay for backup power. But lawmakers eventually stripped that language and instead directed the PUC to review the ancillary services market for potential changes.

Abbott's letter directed regulators to "streamline incentives within the ERCOT market to foster the development and maintenance of adequate and reliable sources of power, like natural gas, coal and nuclear power," adding that the PUC "has the ability to redesign segments of the market to incentivize and maintain the reliable electric generation plants our state needs."

Abbott had signed into law tougher weatherization standards for power plants, but many of the specifics of how to implement them were left up to regulators. In the letter, he said the PUC should instruct ERCOT to "establish a maintenance schedule for natural gas, coal, nuclear and other non-renewable electricity generators to ensure that there is always an adequate supply of power on the grid to maintain reliable electric service for all Texas."

"Regular maintenance of our natural gas, coal, and nuclear plants must be strategically scheduled to prevent too many generation plants from being offline at the same time," Abbott said. "This will help prevent another artificial shortage of power."

Abbott added, "Dispatchable generation, such as natural gas, coal and nuclear power plants, are essential for the reliability and stability of the electric grid because they can be scheduled to provide power to the grid at any time. We must ensure that, at any point in time, ERCOT is utilizing non-renewable electricity in sufficient amounts to maintain reliable power throughout the state."

And the PUC should order ERCOT "to accelerate the development of transmission projects that increase connectivity between existing or new dispatchable generation plants and areas of need," Abbott said.

ERCOT on June 30 approved a rule change designed to provide more backup power generation capacity.