Executive Summary
This was the first ERCOT Board meeting in the new ERCOT Austin offices, and while most of the meeting was the level of rubber stamping one has come to expect from an ERCOT board meeting, there were a couple of big surprises. First, (PUC) Chairman Lake told ERCOT to begin implementing NPRR1108(ERCOT to approve or reject all generation outages) as if it had already been approved, even though it has been stuck at the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) since November and second, the Board failed to approve the nominated chair and vice chair of TAC. This may or may not be tied to rumors of a significant restructuring of the stakeholder process that seem to be in the works.
Notes
- At the end of the first day PUC Chair noted that NPRR1108(ERCOT to approve or reject all generation outages) had stalled at the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and urged TAC to get that NPRR passed. Chairman Lake also told ERCOT to immediately start acting as if it had already been passed.
- Possibly related to above, the Board declined to endorse Clif Lange and Eric Blakey as the chair and vice-chair of TAC, but rather deferred that decision to the April board meeting.
- All Revision Requests brought to the board passed.
- The Board decided to add a Reliability and Markets Committee (to the existing Finance and Audit Committee and Human Resources and Governance Committee)
- The Resource Asset Registration Form replacement project is running long
- ERCOT gave a presentation on Winter Storm Landon (early February) where they sold their significant over forecast of load and under forecast of wind as a good thing. Everyone at the table agreed that ERCOT and the Texas government had done a great job.
- ERCOT will establish a Gas Desk in the operation center prior to the coming winter.
- ERCOT is proposing a System Admin Fee of $0.665/MWh for 2024 and 2025 (up from the current system admin fee of $0.55/MWh)
- ERCOT HR gave a presentation and stated that ERCOT’s attrition rate, while higher than normal for ERCOT was lower than average compared to both Austin based tech companies and other North American Independent System Operators.
- The Independent Market Monitor gave a presentation comparing the market outcomes on February 3rd/4th to the market outcomes of February 23rd/24th.
