The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Jan. 18 voted unanimously to reject battery storage rules proposed by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas that regulators feared would slow development of the resource at a time when the state’s peak demand is rapidly growing.
The Texas grid operator “will need every megawatt of fast, flexible dispatchable generation resources, as soon as possible, to maintain reliability with higher peak electricity demand, more pervasive extreme weather conditions, and the operational challenges presented by increasingly steeper solar ramp downs,” Commissioner Lori Cobos wrote in a Jan. 17 memo ahead of the PUCT vote.
ERCOT’s board of directors, in October, unanimously approved NPRR 1186, which would have required batteries to maintain a certain state of charge depending on the ancillary services they are providing. But PUCT approval is needed to finalize the rule and commissioners noted a lack of similar penalties for gas or coal resources, potentially making the rule discriminatory. They also voiced concerns the rule would slow the addition of battery resources to the ERCOT system.
The PUCT voted 3-0 to remand NPRR 1186 to the ERCOT board. Cobos said she didn’t want to reject the NPRR outright because there are information gathering components that are important.
“I do think that there the informational component of the NPRR is worth salvaging because we're going to need that information” for implementation of real-time co-optimization, said Cobos. The real-time co-optimization project aims to make energy procurement and dispatch more efficient in the ERCOT market.
ERCOT saw peak load grow by about 5,000 MW from summer 2022 to 2023, a roughly a 6.7% increase, and regulators are keen to bring new storage resources online. ERCOT anticipates about 1,000 MW of gas generation coming online over the next few years versus about 8,000 MW of battery resources.
