Up next for ERCOT decision is cost-benefit study

The Public Utility Commission is seeking a cost-benefit analyses ahead of its vote on Lubbock joining the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, so for the next few weeks the impacted electric pools will meeting to determine exactly what that study will look like.

The impacted electric managers are ERCOT, which Lubbock is seeking to join, and the Southwest Power Pool, which Lubbock is seeking to leave after the wholesale contract with Xcel Energy expires in 2019. The impact study isn't required, but members of the commission said all comments and concerns need to be considered in a move this significant.

PUC Chairwoman Donna Nelson filed a memo ahead of a meeting earlier this week after reviewing comments from interested stakeholders. The memo outlined points she'd like to see addressed in the study, including: impact on transmission systems, challenges of the loam moving and leaving, impacton customer costs, future projects needed and avoided and impact on market participants.

One option is to have ERCOT and SPP conduct a joint study, but the two sides seem to want their own study so long as it's comparable. The focus of a meeting between the two earlier this week was to make sure the studies correspond to one another and are comparable.

"The key component here is going to be so that you can interpret the information you're getting, and you don't have a situation where it feels like you're comparing apples to oranges," Warren Lasher, ERCOT's director of system planning, told the PUC.

Sam Loudenslager, principal regulatory analyst at SPP, said some type of preliminary scope will be shared with the commission at the next meeting so the commission knows what the study will gather.

Lubbock Power & Light has also hired a private firm to analyze the impacts of ERCOT, SPP and LP&L customers.

Matt Rose, spokesman for Lubbock Power & Light, said there is either a one-step or a two-step process the PUC could take in its decision to grant LP&L's request to join ERCOT. The one-step process is to approve a Certificate of Convenience and Necessity that covers the approval of the connecting power line, the routing of those lines and the environmental impact studies. The two-step process, which the PUC intends to take, involves the cost-benefit analyses as well as the CCN.

The PUC will also analyze its rulemaking process, since most of its guidelines have to do with either reliability or economics, and an entire municipality joining the grid is both. The commission could adopt its own rules for this process or amend existing rules to incorporate municipalities joining the grid.

Other electric cooperatives could follow suit, and the commission intends to make sure the process is similar each time.

matt.dotray@lubbockonline.com • 766-8744

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