By Tom Kleckner AUSTIN, Texas — ERCOT members last week voted down the ISO’s attempt to salvage a revision request that would have replaced several ancillary services with four new products. Frazier © RTO Insider The nodal protocol revision request (NPRR), rejected earlier in the month by the Protocol Revision...

By Rory Sweeney AUSTIN, Texas — ERCOT’s Technical Advisory Committee last week continued the debate over who should be responsible for Texas’ largely unused smart meter monitoring  website. The website, which allows authorized parties to access individual consumers’ electricity-usage data, has been operated from its inception by Smart Meter Texas...

By Tom Kleckner Xcel Energy has upped the ante in Lubbock Power & Light’s bid to disconnect from SPP and join ERCOT in 2019, asking FERC for an $88.7 million interconnection switching fee should the municipal utility proceed with its plan. The Minnesota-based company filed a request with FERC on...

By Rory Sweeney AUSTIN, Texas — More than three years after it was initially conceived, a short but expensive transmission line to address expected growth in the suburban areas of Denton County, Texas, finally received state regulatory approval last week. The Public Utility Commission approved a somewhat unusual “settlement stipulation”...

By Rory Sweeney FERC reassured LS Power last week that the company's plan to base some of its interstate administrative and operational activities in its Austin, Texas, office won’t trigger commission jurisdiction over ERCOT and its market participants (EL16-46). Cross Texas Transmission is renting 16,000 square feet at the CityView Center...

By Tom Kleckner The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Thursday rejected all motions for rehearing in Hunt Consolidated’s proposed acquisition of Oncor, effectively closing the books on a deal thought to be key to Energy Future Holdings’ emergence from bankruptcy (Docket No. 45188). The commission’s unanimous vote allowed its...

Electric Rates Drop to ‘Near Historic Lows’ The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority approved “near historic” low rates starting July 1 for the standard offers from the state’s two electric utilities, thanks to depressed natural gas prices. The standard rate for Eversource Energy customers will drop from the current 9.555 cents/kWh to...

By Tom Kleckner The Public Utility Commission of Texas agreed Wednesday to wait until no later than June 10 before determining whether to grant a rehearing on its decision to allow Hunt Consolidated’s acquisition of Oncor. The commission granted the extension partly to allow time for review of the flood...

By Tom Kleckner With its effort to convert its Oncor transmission and distribution utility into a real estate investment trust (REIT) foundering, Energy Future Holdings filed a new bankruptcy plan Sunday. The Chapter 11 reorganization plan, filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware, is the latest...

FERC denied reconsideration of a 2012 ruling that granted in part Exelon Wind’s petition for a declaratory order, but it once again declined to initiate an enforcement action against the Public Utility Commission of Texas (EL12-80). The owner of several qualifying facilities under the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, Exelon...