South Texas Electric Cooperative (STEC) has proposed a plan to the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) of Texas "in an effort to continue to work toward resolution of the reliability problems in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market."
The comments submitted ask that the PUC alter the request for proposals (RFP) to permit other proposals, including STEC's, to be reviewed with one goal being the consideration of cost allocation to wind and solar sources.
In a proposal, STEC talked about the intentions of its service.
"The reliability service is intended to support the grid by encouraging dispatchable capacity, providing incentives for firming, and making sure that entities that are participating in the reliability service perform" STEC said in a March 11 proposal. "STEC has been developing its solutions to be consistent with the direction of the Texas Legislature and the commission's recognition that crisis-based grid management through the energy-only market will not provide for the well-being of Texans or the growth of the Texas economy."
The proposal also detailed STEC's cooperation with other organizations.
"STEC has been working with other market participants to build consensus around its reliability service and has added more detail to its proposal in order that the commission and market participants can better analyze the Reliability Service," it wrote.
The STEC proposal added, "STEC respectfully requests the commission's consideration of its proposed reliability service to be studied along with the other market redesign proposals as part of the study process for which the request for proposals has been issued. STEC looks forward to continuing to work with the commission on these important issues."
The STEC proposal states that the organization has a desire to continue to use the market-based framework that is already in place with ERCOT, but use a reliability service to make sure that the grid runs steadily in spite of bad weather weather, maintains "adequate generation in times of low non-dispatchable generation," and cost allocation that is non-discriminatory.
The Houston Daily reported on a letter sent from Gov. Greg Abbott to the PUC last summer, where he told the PUC to condense incentives inside of ERCOT to promote the development and maintenance of proven sources of power including natural gas, coal and nuclear power. He also asked for directives to allocate reliability costs to energy producers that cannot promise availability, such as wind or solar power.
Senate Bill 3 states that a reliability service intended to "ensure appropriate reliability during extreme heat and extreme cold weather conditions and times of low non-dispatchable power production in the power region" must be "dispatchable and able to meet continuous operating requirements for the season in which the service is procured."
"In operation for over 75 years, STEC is a generation and transmission cooperative serving nine member cooperatives of South Texas" STEC says on its website.