ERCOT has told Texas regulators it’s completed its contractual work with LifeCycle Power, CenterPoint Energy and CPS Energy, clearing the way for 15 mobile generators to be moved from Houston to San Antonio and to provide more capacity in the area. 

ERCOT General Counsel Chad Seely said at the Public Utility Commission’s June 5 open meeting that the first wave of generators is expected to arrive in the San Antonio area in July. 

The mobile units, each capable of providing about 30 MW of power in about 10 minutes, will be interconnected to CPS substations in the city. Eight of the nine substations that will house the units are ready for delivery. 

“I know LifeCycle has committed to move as quickly as possible,” Seely said. “A tremendous amount of work by everyone to get this across the finish line.” 

ERCOT says the generators are necessary to mitigate emergency load-shed that may be necessary to avoid overloads of a generic transmission constraint. Staff have been working on the agreement since February 2025, when it became apparent they would not be able to extend reliability-must-run agreements to two aging CPS gas-fired units. (See ERCOT Board OKs Mobile Generators in San Antonio.) 

The grid operator earlier entered into an RMR contract with CPS for V.H. Braunig Unit 3, its first. The San Antonio municipality said in 2024 that it was planning to retire all three Braunig units in March 2025. ERCOT said the plant’s retirement would lead to reliability issues until the transmission constraint is resolved. (See ERCOT Evaluating RMR, MRA Options for CPS Plant.) 

Under the agreement, ERCOT will be able to dispatch the units only during actual or expected emergency conditions. The costs (an estimated $51 million) will be uplifted to qualified scheduling entities representing load on an hourly load-ratio share basis. 

The units are leased from LifeCycle by CenterPoint. The Houston utility made them available to ERCOT, without compensation, through March 2027. 

ISO Gets Good-cause Exception

The PUC granted ERCOT a good-cause exception for the 2025 Regional Transmission Plan, allowing the grid operator to adjust load forecasts outside the protocols’ requirements.  

Recent state legislation requires the grid operator to include any load in its projections that doesn’t yet have a signed interconnection agreement. The ISO’s staff have proposed a 49.8% reduction in data center loads and a 55.4% cut in these “substantiated loads,” which are support by an executed interconnection agreement, a credible third-party forecast, or attestation by a transmission and distribution service provider (55999). 

The reductions bring the forecasts more in line with historical performance, ERCOT said. 

The PUC declined ERCOT’s request during its May 15 meeting, asking staff to provide additional information. (See ERCOT, PUC Refining Future Load Projections.) 

CenterPoint to Securitize $396M

In other actions, the PUC: 

• • approved CenterPoint’s request to securitize $396 million of system restoration costs from two storms in May 2024. The commissioners agreed with Chair Thomas Gleeson’s proposal to adopt a standard of negligence instead of gross negligence (57559). 
  • adopted a rule that sets reporting requirements for transmission providers and establishes monitoring responsibilities as part of the plan to build 765-kV import paths into the petroleum-rich Permian Basin. The monitor will identify the schedule and cost components that may affect the project’s timely development and approval of necessary service requirements, while also shedding transparency of expenses. The transmission providers will bear the monitor’s costs (57602). (See Texas PUC Approves 765-kV Transmission Option for Permian Basin.)