Dive Brief:
- The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Thursday approved Entergy’s strategic resiliency plan, which includes $137 million in grid hardening projects such as undergrounding power lines, rebuilding high-voltage transmission lines and upgrading local distribution systems.
- However, regulators balked at Entergy’s request for conditional approval of $198 million in additional projects the utility wants to pay for through the Texas Energy Fund, which provides grants and loans for construction, maintenance and modernization of power facilities.
- Texas lawmakers in 2023 required electric utilities to submit resiliency plans to improve grid reliability. Oncor Electric’s plan was the first to be approved, in November.
Dive Insight:
Regulators’ approval on Thursday covers the first phase of Entergy’s Texas Future Ready Resiliency Plan, to be executed over three years.
“This is more than a plan,” Eliecer Viamontes, president and CEO of Entergy Texas, said in a statement. “The PUCT’s approval allows us to continue building a power grid that can withstand today’s challenges and adapt to tomorrow’s needs.”
The utility also said it plans to pursue funding from the TEF Outside ERCOT Grant Program “to implement additional projects at no cost to customers and explore innovative financing options like storm securitization to deliver long-term savings.”
Texas voters authorized the TEF in 2023, primarily to incentivize development of new power plants. Separate programs cover grants inside and outside the Electric Reliability Council of Texas footprint, and the first in-ERCOT projects were selected for review in August.
Proposed rules for the outside-ERCOT grant program are expected to be considered by the PUCT at the Jan. 31 open meeting, PUCT Chair Thomas Gleason said in a Wednesday memo.
Lawmakers created the TEF and required utility system resiliency plans “as two distinct vehicles for investment,” Gleason said. “I think conditional approval in this case would blur the lines between programs that should be kept separate.”
“I think we need to make sure we keep those separate,” Commissioner Courtney Hjaltman said at the Thursday open meeting. “TEF, that part of the rule hasn’t even been adopted so we need to make sure we have some bright lines there.”
The removed projects include roughly $180 million in hardening projects and $18.6 million in wildfire mitigation projects. Nothing about the decision keeps Entergy from seeking to implement the projects later, commissioners said.
Entergy said it is looking for ways to improve power reliability without raising customer bills.
The utility was selected to receive almost $54 million in federal funding through the Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program, and said a portion of these funds will offset the cost of the phase one projects as well.
“Over the next 50 years, these improvements are projected to reduce outage times by an estimated 1 billion minutes, significantly cutting the time families and businesses spend in the dark after severe weather events,” the utility said.
