Executive Summary
The first real meeting of the new independent Board of Directors. At the beginning of each segment, the presenter did a good job of explaining what they are presenting in a tutorial manner. The ERCOT CEO started with a warning that Monday’s conditions could be tight. Chairman Lake, Commissioner McAdams and Commissioner Cobos urged ERCOT to do whatever they could (including a surprising amount of emphasis on distribution voltage reduction) to stop from issuing a conservation notice. Woody and Kenan (ERCOT Operations and Market VPs) gave brief summaries of the summer (wet, lower load, missed peak prediction by 4GW, many more RUCs). JP (ERCOT CIO) talked about the EMS upgrade and how it affected other market initiatives (if you do new initiatives before, it makes the EMS upgrade more complicated because you have to roll it into the upgrade as well; if you do new initiatives during, it makes tasting more complicated because you can’t just compare the new EMS to the old EMS). Sean Taylor talked about the finances (less revenue and expenses than budget, okay overall) and Mara Speck talked about how it is harder to retain people because they are actively being recruited away with significantly higher salary offers. Clif Lange (STEC/TAC Chair) gave the TAC report. During the TAC report Chairman Lake emphasized that stakeholder process business as usual has been deemed unacceptable by the legislature and the governor, so it will have to change somehow (no indication whatsoever what was wrong with it, though). The Chairman of the ERCOT board assured him that they would change it as soon as they had more comfort in knowing what was going on.
