The Public Utility Commission of Texas on Friday approved Oncor’s application for a certificate of convenience and necessity to begin work on its Far West Texas Project, a transmission upgrade to meet the Permian Basin’s oil and gas production load growth (Docket 48095).

ERCOT approved the Odessa EHV-Riverton and Bakersfield-Solstice 345-kV transmission lines in 2017. The grid operator’s Board of Directors designated the Odessa-Riverton line as critical to system reliability in February. (See “Directors Grant ‘Critical’ Status to West Texas Project,” ERCOT Board of Directors Briefs: Feb. 20, 2018.)

The project is expected to cost $336 million to $501 million, depending on the route selected. Oncor has presented a recommended route and 88 alternatives, each between 110 and 133 miles in length.

Oncor said it has already acquired between 12 and 15% of the right of way, depending on the route selected.

Garland, Cross Texas to Share 345-kV Line

The PUC approved a request by Cross Texas Transmission and the city of Garland to share a 67-mile transmission line, completed as part of the Houston Import Project (Docket 48202).

Cross Texas will transfer 38 miles of the Limestone-to-Gibbons Creek 345-kV double-circuit transmission line to Garland. Cross Texas, a unit of LS Power, built the line under an agreement with Garland, which paid for a portion of the line during construction. The line was energized in April.

ERCOT had directed the entities to build the line and upgrade the Gibbons Creek substation as part of the $590 million Houston Import Project. The rest of the project comprised transmission and substation upgrades.

PUC to Intervene in FERC Dockets

The commissioners went into a closed session as soon as they convened their open meeting. Following the 39-minute executive session, Walker said the PUC would intervene in three dockets at FERC:

• ER18-2358, which would place GridLiance’s Oklahoma transmission facilities and its annual revenue requirement under SPP’s Tariff.
• ER18-2273, in which MISO seeks a one-year waiver of its Tariff requirement to conduct quarterly voltage and local reliability (VLR) studies. The RTO also seeks permission to designate a VLR issue in the Baton Rouge, La., area as “commercially significant,” thus allocating the costs to load-zone asset owners in the EES, CLEC, LEPA and LAGN local balancing authorities.
• ER18-2363, a MISO request to revise part of its resource adequacy construct, creating external resource zones, allocating excess auction revenues to load-serving entities affected by the changes, and aligning parameters used to calculate auction inputs.

The PUC also agreed to publish questions for stakeholder comment for a rulemaking addressing battery storage and other non-traditional technologies in delivery service (Project 48023).

It also set a deadline of 8 a.m. Sept. 17 for retail electric providers (REPs) to list their offerings in both Spanish and English on the commission’s Power to Choose website, where consumers in Texas’ competitive areas can shop for electricity providers.

Chair DeAnn Walker noted 34 of the 57 REPs on the website don’t include their offerings in both languages.

“I’m not happy with that at all,” Walker said. “I’ll give them the weekend to get it done. If they don’t have it at 8 a.m. Monday, [staff] will start pulling off the ones that aren’t” bilingual.

True to her word, the PUC deactivated 221 electricity plans from 18 retail electric providers Monday morning. Some plans were quickly reactivated later in the day, when the REPs listed their offerings on both websites.

The ERCOT market has 117 REPs that offer more than 900 electricity plans.

ERCOT Files Bylaw Changes for Approval

ERCOT on Sept. 11 filed amendments to its articles of incorporation and amended and restated bylaws for the PUC’s approval. The grid operator hopes to have the changes in place for the 2019 operating year.

The ERCOT board approved the changes in August, the first to the governing documents since 2000. The amendments to the bylaws clarify the definition of affiliates and affiliate relationships.

— Tom Kleckner